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THE BOYS' LIFE OF 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 



BY 



HELEN NICOLAY 

AUTHOR OF "THE BOYS' LIFE 
OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN" 



miustratcb 




Zw^s^yf^f^V* 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1909 



Copyright, 1909, by 
The Century Co. 

Published October, igoo 




E 



24 8 263 



V 



THE OE VINNE PRE 



PREFACE 

This little book is based upon the " Personal 
Memoirs of U. S. Grant." For facts concerning 
the latter years of his life I have relied chiefly 
upon "Grant, His Life and Character," by Hamlin 
Garland, to whom I make my grateful acknow- 
ledgments. Other works freely used and con- 
sulted are the biographies by Coppee, A. D. 
Richardson, Chas. A. Dana, Wm. Conant Church, 
Walter Allen, and Owen Wister, Adam Badeau's 
"Grant in Peace," Horace Porter's "Campaign- 
ing with Grant," John Fiske's " Mississippi Valley 
in the Civil War," Henry Adam's "Historical 
Essays," "Abraham Lincoln: A History," by John 
G. Nicolay and John Hay, Vol. VII of the "Cam- 
bridge Modern History," Sherman's "Memoirs," 
John Russell Young's "Around the World with 
Grant," the "Congressional Globe," and various 
tables of official statistics. 

But in a volume of this size the question is 
never so much what can be put in as what cannot 



vi PREFACE 

be left out. The aim in this case has been to 
choose the incidents that would appeal particu- 
larly to the readers for which it is designed, and 
which, taken together, would not present a dis- 
torted picture of the great General. 

H. N. 
July 15, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PACE 

I Just a Boy 3 

II Uncle Sam's Scholar 2^ 

III His BAPTIS^[ of Fire 45 

IV The Romance of War 64 

V The Man Who Could Not Succeed . 84 

VI His Country's Call 102 

VII Fame and Slander 124 

VIII The Man Who Kept on Trying . . .150 

IX The Nation's Hero 173 

X His New Task 195 

XI Life at City Point 220 

XII A Generous Foe 245 

XIII A Soldier's Honor 275 

XIV The Nation's Choice 300 

XV Grant, The President 318 

XVI The Guest of Kings 343 

XVII His Last Brave Fight 363 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

U. S. Grant, Bvt. 2d Lt. 4th Inf'y . . Frontispiece . 

Birthplace of General U. S. Grant, Point Pleasant, 

Ohio 9 -^ 

The Parents of General Ulysses S. Grant ... 17 

General Grant's Signature in an Autograph Al- 
bum signed by West Point Men . . 35 

Lieutenant U. S. Grant and Lieutenant (afterward 

General) Alexander Hays .... -53 

Zachary Taylor (1852) 69 

General Winfield Scott 87 

Abraham Lincoln 109 

Reduced facsimile of the original " Unconditional 

Surrender" Despatch 136 

Pittsburg Landing. From a photograph taken a 

few days after the battle 143 

Rear- Admiral Porter's Flotilla passing the Vicks- 

burg Batteries on the night of April 16, 1863 . 163 

General Grant's Saddle 186 

Lincoln's God-speed to Grant. Reduced facsimile 

of the original 201 

General Grant at Headquarters during the Vir- 
ginia Campaign 207 . 

ix 



X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

General Grant's Cabin, formerly Headquarters at 
City Point: removed in 1865 to East Park, 
Philadelphia, where it now stands . . . .251 

McClean's House, Appomattox Court-House . 269 

General Lee and Colonel Marshall leaving 

McClean's House after the Surrender . . 269 

General Grant as President 315 

General Grant's Reception in Japan 355 

General Grant at Mt. McGregor 371 



THE BOYS' LIFE OF 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 



THE BOYS' LIFE OF 
ULYSSES S. GRANT 



M' 



JUST A BOY 

ORE than three million men, North and 
South, put on the uniform of the soldier and 
took part in the long and hitter struggle of Amer- 
ica's Civil War. Tens of thousands gave their 
lives, and lie in nameless if not forgotten graves. 
Other tens of thousands fought as gallantly, and 
would have died as willingly. Hundreds gained 
renown. Tens gained lasting fame. Above them 
all, the apex of this pyramid of patriotism and 
strife, stands a single figure — quiet, unassuming, 
forceful — the man who brought the great war to 
an end. 

Short, stocky of build, grave of face, he did not 
look like a hern, and he was too earnestly intent 

3 



4 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

on his task to pause and think how the world 
might look at him. He was a plain man, doing a 
plain hard duty— as far removed from the dash 
and glitter of heroics as his plain soldier's blouse 
was from the showy breastplate and shield of 
ancient war. Yet his life held as sharp contrasts 
and as sudden changes as that of any hero of 
song or story. He was the greatest captain of his 
time, yet he hated war and longed for peace. He 
knew obscurity and world-wide fame, contemp- 
tuous neglect, and almost unlimited power, the 
friendship of kings, and the bitterness of accept- 
ing charity. His last, most triumphant fight was 
against Death itself. His story is one of the 
romances of our modern world. 

He came of fighting stock. His great-grand- 
father Noah Grant, and Noah's younger brother 
Solomon, both lost their lives fighting the French 
and Indians in 1756. His grandfather, also 
named Noah, took part in the battle of Bunker 
Hill, and continued in the Continental army until 
the fall of Yorktown. How much fighting his 
ancestors did before the first Grant came to these 
shores, only the Recording Angel knows. 

The family is supposed to be of Scotch origin, 
and the motto of tlie clan of Grant — "Stand fast, 
stand sure" — fits the most illustrious of all Grants 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 5 

as though made for hitn; hut whether it is his by 
riq-ht of inheritance, is uncertain. After all, it is 
of little consequence, for it was he, and not his 
ancestors, who shed j::lory upon the name. The 
principal fact to note is that he came of plain and 
honest people, who bequeathed him a healthy 
body and a sound mind — good folk, equally re- 
moved from genius and from crime. 

Matthew, the first Grant in America, sailed 
from England in the ship Mary and Jolin in the 
year 1630. He settled in Dorchester, Massa- 
chusetts, and afterward went to Windsor, Con- 
necticut, where he acted as town clerk, and was 
surveyor of the county for more than forty years. 
Our General Ulysses S. Grant was eighth in di- 
rect line from Matthew Grant. 

Gradually the family moved westward. Noah 
Grant, the Revolutionary soldier, found himself, 
at the end of his military service, a widower with 
tw^o sons. He emigrated to Pennsylvania, and 
soon after married a Miss Kelly, who bore him 
five children. The second of these was Jesse Root 
Grant, the father of our General. In 1799 Cap- 
tain Noah and his family emigrated again, this 
time to Ohio, settling where the town of Deerfield 
now^ stands. He does not seem to have prospered 
by this move, and when his wife died, six years 
later, the Captain had neither the courage nor the 



6 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

strength to struggle on and keep his family to- 
gether. He took the two youngest children and 
went to pass his declining years with Peter, a son 
by his first wife, who had settled in Kentucky, 
and was growing rich. The others found shelter 
and employment in the neighborhood. Jesse en- 
tered the family of Judge Tod of Youngstown, 
Ohio, where he was treated like a son, and repaid 
the care bestowed upon him with the warmest 
affection. 

When he was old enough to learn a trade he 
went away to his prosperous half-brother Peter, 
and became a tanner. Then he returned to prac- 
tise his trade in Deerfield, living with a cer- 
tain Mr. Brown, father of the John Brown who 
tried to liberate the slaves in the S-^uth with a 
force of less than twenty men, and whose "body 
lies moldering in the grave, while his soul goes 
marching on." At that time John was only a lad, 
and there was no hint of the tragic fate awaiting 
him. 

After a time Jesse established himself in busi- 
ness at Ravenna, and a few years later pursued 
his calling at Point Pleasant, on the Ohio river, 
about twenty-five miles east of Cincinnati. He 
was a man of strong character, with a great thirst 
for education. Schools had been few on the 
Western Reserve during his boyhood. Even with 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 7 

the help of Judge Tod, he was able to get very lit- 
tle instruction, but by dint of borrowing and care- 
fully studying every book that came in his way 
he made himself an excellent English scholar, and 
from the time that he was twenty, wrote, both in 
I)rose and verse, for the western newspapers. He 
was also a ready talker, able and willing to bear 
his part in village discussions, whether in the free 
range of the debating society or the more limited 
and practical field of local politics. He undoubt- 
edly had peculiarities ; not the least of which was 
that he did not care to hold office. In person he 
was nearly six feet tall, with strongly marked 
features— a man of force, mentally and physi- 
cally. He had some enemies, for he was out- 
spokenly Northern in a community made up 
largely from the South; but his sturdy inde- 
pendence won him something that more than com- 
pensated for all these enemies — the love of 
Hannah Simpson, a slender, comely, reticent 
maiden who had come with her father from 
Pennsylvania two years before. 

On June 24, 1821, they were married, and be- 
gan life together in a little frame dwelling near 
a bend of the Ohio river. Their home would have 
seemed the height of elegance to pioneers twenty 
years earlier, but according to later standards it 
was simplicity itself. In the middle was the door, 



8 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

on each side of that a small window, and at one 
end, built outside, was the chimney. The low 
roof sloped toward the road. Inside were two 
rooms, with a low shed-like ell in the rear. Here, 
on April 2^, 1822, a baby was born, who, being 
their first child, and a boy, became at once an im- 
portant person in their eyes, though it took the 
neighbors forty years or more to discover that the 
family opinion was justified. The Simpsons, as 
well as the Grants, took an interest in the child, 
and discussion as to what it should be called waxed 
so warm that it was finally decided to settle the 
matter by lot. An aunt wanted him called Theo- 
dore; the mother favored Albert; his grandfather 
Simpson liked Hiram ; his step-grandmother sug- 
gested Ulysses. All these names were written on 
slips of paper and put into a hat ; two were drawn 
out, Hiram and Ulysses, with the result that the 
baby was solemnly declared to be Hiram Ulysses 
Grant. A good mouth-filling name certainly, and 
one hard enough to live up to. But he was never 
called Hiram, and Ulysses was soon shortened to 
"Lyssus," or "Lys" for daily use, while those who 
wished to be particularly aggravating changed it 
into "Useless." 

When he was a year old his parents moved to 
Georgetown, the county seat of Brown County, 
ten miles from the Ohio river and about forty 







':S^r^i 



ULYSSES S. GRANT ii 

miles from Cincinnati. Here he li\ccl until he 
was seventeen. It was a good town frf)ni a hoy's 
point of view. Twenty or thirty houses were 
grouped around the court-house square. Forest 
trees still stood in the streets, which were more 
])roperly speaking country roads; yet the settle- 
ment was well past the pioneer stage, and com- 
fort though not luxury was to be found in the 
plain little houses. The people who lived in them 
were hard-working, serious-minded men and 
women, bent on subduing the wilderness and 
turning it into a land of farms. Day by day they 
labored, felling trees, fencing land, rooting up 
stumps, and rolling useless logs into great piles to 
be burned, while the forest stood all about them, 
scarcely touched as yet by the little band of men 
intent on its destruction. In its beautiful depths 
were hidden a thousand things dear to boyish 
hearts: nuts, fruits, spicy sassafras, wonders of 
bloom and fragrance, poisonous growths that lent 
a lillip of danger to investigation and experiment; 
and a multitude of wild creatures that might be- 
come either pets or prey. Best of all, two creeks, 
one east of the town, the other west, rolled to- 
ward the Ohio, big with possibilities of swim- 
ming-holes, fishing-places, and skating. 

Ulysses enjoyed all these delights, and survived 
his share of the dangers. It is recorded that once 



12 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

— it must have been in his very early years, for 
he was clad in a gay striped blouse of red and 
white — he fell into one of these creeks, and was 
fished out and saved to fame by a boy who after- 
ward rose to high rank in the Navy. The same 
story is told about Lincoln and almost every other 
public man. Probably they are all true, for it is a 
poor ^ind of boy who does not fall into the water 
at least once in his life. 

But life was not all play. He has himself told 
us how his days were filled: ''Every one labored 
more or less in the region where my youth was 
spent. . . . While my father carried on the 
manufacture of leather, and worked at the trade 
himself, he owned and tilled considerable land. I 
detested the trade, preferring almost any other 
labor; but I was fond of agriculture, and of all 
employments in which horses were used. We 
had, among other lands, fifty acres of forest 
within a mile of the village. In the fall of the 
year choppers were employed to cut enough wood 
to last a twelvemonth. When I was seven or 
eight years of age I began hauling all the wood 
used in the house and shops. I could not load it 
on the wagons, of course, at that time, but I could 
drive, and the choppers would load and some one 
at the house unload. When about eleven years 
old I was strong enough to hold a plow. From 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 13 

that age until seventeen I did all the work with 
the horses, such as breaking up the land, furrow- 
ing, plowing corn and potatoes, bringing in the 
crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, be- 
sides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, 
and sawing wood for the stoves, etc., while still 
attending school." 

Jesse Grant, mindful of his own early lack of 
advantages, never allowed his son to miss a single 
term of the village school. Ulysses himself pre- 
ferred driving the horses— a preference easy to 
understand, in view of the picture he has left us 
of the school and its master. "I had as many 
])rivileges as any boy in the village, and probably 
more than most of them. I have no recollection 
of ever having been punished at home, either by 
scolding or by the rod. But at school the case was 
dilTerent. I can see John D. White, the school- 
teacher, now, with his long beech switch always in 
his hand. It was not always the same one either. 
Switches were brought in bundles from a beech 
wood near the school-house by the boys for whose 
benefit they \vere intended. Often a whole bundle 
would be used up in a single day." Young Grant 
was not naturally studious, and this method of 
imparting knowledge was certainly not calculated 
to make it more attractive. The books were few 
and uninteresting, and Mr. White's scholars, 



14 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

from the mere babies learning their a-b-c's, to 
young women of eighteen and men of twenty, 
plodded along as best they might. Nothing was 
taught beyond "readin', writin', and 'rithmetic." 
The older boys and girls were kept drearily study- 
ing the books they had studied the year before, 
and the years before that. Even when Ulysses 
was sent away from home to get the benefit of 
schools in larger towns, first to Maysville, Ken- 
tucky, and next year to Ripley, Ohio, "both win- 
ters were spent in going over the same old arith- 
metic," and in "repeating 'A noun is the name of 
a thing,' which I had also heard my Georgetown 
teachers repeat, until I had come to believe it." "I 
never saw an algebra or other mathematical work 
higher than the arithmetic in Georgetown until 
after I was appointed to West Point. I then bought 
a work on algebra in Cincinnati, but having no 
teacher, it was Greek to me." But in Maysville 
there was at least a "Philomathean Society" 
which he joined and helped discuss such weightv 
questions as, "Resolved: That females wield 
greater influence in society than males"; "That it 
would not be just and politic to liberate the slaves 
at this time"; "That Socrates was right in not 
escaping when the prison doors were opened to 
him" ; and where he offered a characteristic res- 
olution — "That it be considered out of order for 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 15 

any member to speak on the opposite side to which 
he is placed." 

Fortunately education goes on out of doors as 
well as inside four walls. All his labor on farm 
and field broui^hl liini knowledge useful later on, 
and even his love of horses taught him lessons 
never to be forgotten. From babyhood he had a 
l)assion for horses, and seemed to possess a secret 
understanding with them which enabled him to 
make them do what he pleased. A story is told 
that shows how soon his family realized this 
power and his ability to take care of himself. A 
friend caught a glimpse of him in wdiat she 
thought deadly peril, and hurried to tell Hannah 
Grant that her firstborn, who was scarcely more 
than a babv, was swinging on the tails of a neigh- 
bor's team; but the quiet and self-contained 
mother, secure in her belief in Ulysses and Divine 
Providence, only smiled and went about her tasks 
undismayed. 

As Ulysses grew older there was no horse too 
wild for him to drive. He won a proud distinc- 
tion among his mates by mastering the trick pony 
at a circus, and carrying off the five-dollar prize, 
after w-hich his sturdy little figure in overalls 
could be seen galloping through the village street 
on his father's horses, emulating all the bareback 
antics of the riders in tights and spangles. But 



i6 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

not all his experiences brought him such glory, A 
horse trade that he conducted at the age of eight 
caused him many heart-burnings. He coveted a 
colt for which his father had offered twenty dol- 
lars. Its owner demanded twenty-five dollars. 
After the man had gone the lad begged his father 
to buy the horse at the owaier's price. Jesse 
yielded, grumbling that the animal was only 
worth twenty, but bade Ulysses go after him and 
offer him that sum. If he refused, he might offer 
$22.50, and if he still held out, he might give him 
the full twenty-five dollars. The boy mounted 
and went in joyous pursuit. When he found the 
man he was so full of his errand that he blurted 
out the whole truth in one breathless sentence. 
"Papa says that I may oft'er you twenty dollars 
for the colt, but if you won't take that I am to 
offer $22.50, and if you won't take that, to give 
you twenty-five dollars!" Of course he brought 
the colt home, but his triumph was short-lived. 
The story got out through the village, and it re- 
quired a really great achievement like that of 
mastering the trick pony to silence his mates, and 
make them stop asking him how he got his horse, 
and what he paid for it. 

He was a shy boy, very sensitive to ridicule, 
and that story, with others like it, born of his own 
truthfulness and guileless candor, caused him to 




^izin^^nziiMms^SM!insj2Ai:^^ 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 19 

shrink more and more within himself —to close his 
lips tight upon thoughts and fancies, and to live 
an inner life apart, for fear of being laughed at. 
Some of tile village people thought him stu])id. 
Others said that he was growing like his mother. 
She was a rare woman, much beloved by young 
and old — of strong, steady character, very quiet, 
very reserved, very even-tempered, very patient 
—the kind of woman to whom people brought 
their troubles, but who gave no confidences in re- 
turn. She seldom laughed, and never complained. 
Her son has recorded that he never saw her shed 
a tear. The people who did not like Jesse Grant 
declared roundly that "Lyssus got his sense from 
his mother." 

She was indeed very sensible, and, although 
deeply religious, not at all austere. Both she and 
her husband were quite willing that their children 
should have the pleasures as w^ell as the tasks of 
childhood, and in compensation for all the work 
he had to do Grant tells us that they made "no ob- 
jection to rational enjoyments, such as fishing, 
going to the creek a mile away to swim in sum- 
mer, . . . visiting my grandparents in the ad- 
joining county, . . . skating on the ice in winter, 
or taking a horse and sleigh when there was snow 
upon the ground." Theirs seems to have been a 
wholesome family life, with much quiet affection. 



20 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

though it was not the habit of either parents or 
children to show it openly. Ulysses had a great 
deal of liberty. Certain tasks had to be done, but 
if one of these happened to be distasteful to him, 
and he could get a substitute to perform it for 
him, no objection was made. In the matter of 
horses, after that early trade had taught him to 
be more wary, he was allowed to have his own 
way, caring for them and trading them as suited 
his fancy. Being a trustworthy lad, and so very 
expert a driver, his father did not hesitate to send 
him long distances on errands. In this way he 
visited Cincinnati several times, and Louisville 
once; and when a neighbor's family was moving 
away from Georgetown, he drove them and their 
belongings to Chillicothe, seventy-five miles 
away. He was probably the most traveled boy in 
Georgetown, and these journeys were also an 
education, not only in knowledge of the country 
which they gave him, but in self-reliance, and 
readiness to meet unforeseen emergencies. 

Sometimes his love of horses led him into 
serious scrapes, but his perseverance and in- 
genuity usually got him safely out of them. On 
his way home from Chillicothe he traded one 
horse of the team he was driving for a saddle- 
horse that had never been in harness, and started 
on sedately enough, until a barking dog fright- 



ULYSSES S. CRANT 21 

ened the untrained animal into a paroxysm of 
running- and kicking- that threatened ruin to the 
carriage and everything in its neighborliood, and 
caused the man who was riding with him to desert 
and take refuge in the slow-moving stage. Left 
alone, Ulysses tried all the arts in his power to 
quiet the animal, but to no purpose. Every time 
he started it was in a series of leaps and kicks. 
The lad was in a quandary. If he could only 
reach Maysville, where his prosperous Uncle 
Peter lived, he knew he could borrow another 
liorse and get safely home, but Maysville was 
more than a day's journey away. The problem 
was serious, and the outlook not bright, but he 
stuck to it, without a thought of giving up, just 
as he won his battles in later years, and finally, by 
tying his bandana handkerchief over the fright- 
ened animal's eyes, and leading him step by step, 
brought him safely into his uncle's town. 

Grant was, in short, very like other lads of his 
years. He preferred horses to books, and liked 
play better than work. He was a slow, plodding, 
dependable sort of boy, not brilliant, but far from 
stupid, as some of his neighbors charged. He 
excelled in nothing but his horsemanship. He was 
unusually silent, but it was from sensitiveness, 
and not from indifiference. He was manly, prac- 
tical, and obedient, and as honest as the day is 



22 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

long— the kind of lad his mates and the grown- 
ups poked fun at, and then relied upon to do the 
things that they either would not or could not do 
themselves. Even at that early day he showed 
the qualities that were to make and mar his for- 
tunes in after life. 



II 

UNCT^E SAM's scholar 

THE one cloud that darkened his horizon as 
lie i^rew older was the dread that before 
long he would be re(juired to take his place in the 
tannery. He hated the place from the bottom of 
his heart. Already he had to grind oak bark to 
be used in turning the skins into leather. That 
was bad enough, wearisome for the muscles and 
tiresome for the mind, for the hopper-like mill 
stood under a shed where nothing was to be seen 
except the poor horse walking dismally round 
and round. Whenever he could do so he hired 
some other boy to grind for him, and escaped to 
the more congenial task of hauling the bark from 
the forest; but even the mill was Paradise com- 
pared with the beam-room where the fresh new 
skins were stretched and scraped — a place of 
nauseating odors and reeking hides, that made 
him sick, body and soul. 

His father said nothing. Perhaps he did not 
notice how the boy manoeuvered to keep away 

23 



24 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

from the evil-smelling place. Then came the res- 
pite of the winter in Maysville at school. 
Finally, when he was sixteen, the blow fell. His 
father was short of help, and Ulysses was called 
to the beam-room. He responded at once, but 
reluctantly enough. As they walked together to- 
ward the tannery he told his father that he would 
never follow that trade. He would work at it 
until he was twenty-one, but never a day after he 
became his own master. The lad might have 
saved himself those years of needless dread. 
Jesse Grant was reasonable, even lenient where 
his eldest son was concerned. Probably he had 
not known until that moment how heartily the 
silent, obedient boy disliked the tannery. He an- 
swered kindly that he did not wish him to work at 
any trade that he had no intention of following, 
and asked what he would like to do. 

To this Ulysses had no ready answer. He 
would be a farmer, he said, or a down-river 
trader, or "get an education" — this latter some- 
what vague proposal being thrown in very likely 
to appease his father, whose respect for learning- 
was one of his strongest traits. "Getting an edu- 
cation" seemed to the boy, modestly distrustful of 
his own abilities, a very unattainable thing, but it 
was the only part of his proposal that appealed 
to the older man. Beins: a farmer was all very 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 25 

well, but the land that Jesse Grant had cultivated 
in past years was now rented to some one else. A 
down-river trader he certainly did not want his 
son to be. An education was really the goal of 
his ambition for the boy, who had heretofore 
shown little interest in acquiring it. If he was 
waking up to a desire for it, something must be 
done. Times were hard enough, and an education 
was an expensive luxury. The father thought 
longingly of West Point. Four boys had gone to 
the Military Academy from Georgetown, and had 
done well. He asked Ulysses how he would like 
that, and Ulysses, thinking it a glittering day- 
dream, and secure in the knowledge that there 
was no vacancy in that district, answered 
promptly, "First-rate." 

Nothing more was said. That autumn Ulysses 
went to Ripley, Ohio, for another session with the 
well-remembered arithmetic, and spiritless repeti- 
tion of "A noun is the name of a thing." The 
mind of Jesse Grant meanwhile ran on West 
Point. Bartlett Bailey, the boy neighbor who had 
the appointment, had failed once, and left the 
Academy to be tutored in a private school. Then 
he was reappointed, but before the next examina- 
tion was dismissed. His father, disappointed and 
unforgiving, forbade him to return home. No- 
body in town knew of the little domestic tragedy 



26 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

— only the boy's mother had come to Mrs. Grant 
for sympathy in her son's disgrace and his 
father's hard-heartedness. 

Here was an opportunity ready-made to Jesse's 
hand, but pride stepped in. The congressman 
who had the power of appointing young Bailey's 
successor was Thomas L. Hamer, an old friend 
with whom Jesse Grant had quarreled. Both re- 
gretted the misunderstanding, but neither would 
take the first step toward reconciliation. Even 
with his son's welfare at heart Jesse Grant could 
not make up his mind to write to him. Instead, he 
applied to the War Department through one of 
Ohio's senators. The Department answered that 
Mr. Hamer's consent would be necessary, where- 
upon Jesse pocketed his pride and sent the con- 
gressman a polite note. Mr. Flamer, glad of an 
opportunity to end the quarrel, made the appoint- 
ment. Thus the very beginning of Ulysses' mili- 
tary career was to bring about peace. 

The boy most interested of course knew noth- 
ing about all this. While he was at home for the 
Christmas holidays his father received a letter. 
After reading it he turned to his son. 

"Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive the 
appointment !" 

"What appointment?" 

"To West Point. I have applied for it." 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 27 

The world whirled about him. Me thought of 
all one had to know to enter the Military Acad- 
emy; of the very little he had learned; of the 
ignominy of failure; of the jeers of his comradevS 
if he should be rejected ; of the embarrassment of 
meeting Bartlett Bailey if he passed. 

"But," he stammered, "I won't go." 

'T think vou will!" his father answered; and 
Ulysses, noting his determined expression and 
firmly set jaw, hurriedly concluded, if that were 
the case, that he thought so too. 

Then followed months of preparation— a sea- 
son of inward shrinking and keen anticipation. 
He wanted, yet he did not want, to go. The 
neighbors openly scofTed at the appointment. 
"Why could n't they appoint a boy who would be 
a credit to the district?" they asked. 

In truth. Grant was the most unmartial of boys. 
He cared little for guns, hated to see things killed, 
was slow of speech, sluggish of movement, unam- 
bitious in his studies. He could wTcstle fairly 
well— when he had to— and he sometimes fished; 
but these did not seem sufficient qualifications. 
Even the military exploits of his grandfather 
Noah, and the two family heroes of the French 
and Indian War failed to rouse his enthusiasm. 
It seemed a pity to waste a West Point education 
on him. 



28 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

But he did want to see the world. West 
Point was very far away. A journey thither 
would give him a chance to see the two largest 
cities of the United States, Philadelphia and New 
York. When he thought of what lay beyond 
them, he hoped that kindly Fate would arrange a 
steamboat collision, or a railroad accident, or 
some other honorable means of delaying the 
ordeal. 

Finally the day of departure came. There was 
no undue emotion in the family leave-taking. 
Hannah Grant bade him good-by in her usual 
self-repressed manner, and the others were 
equally composed. When Mrs. Bailey came run- 
ning out of her house with a kiss and a tearful 
God-speed, he looked at her in wonder. 'Why," 
he said, "you must be sorry I am going! My 
mother did not cry." 

He took passage on a steamer at Ripley for 
Pittsburg, about the middle of May, 1839. West- 
ern boats in those days did not make schedule 
time, but obligingly stopped as often and long for 
freight and passengers as occasion required. This 
time there were no delays, and he made a quick 
trip of three days. From Pittsburg he went by 
canal to Harrisburg— partly because the canal- 
boat was slower than the stage, and partly be- 
cause it would afford a better view of the scenery. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 29 

From Harrisburg to IMiiladcIphia he had his first 
thrilhng experience of a railroad, which flew 
along at the astonishing rate of twelve or fifteen 
miles an hour, and seemed to fairly annihilate 
space. He stayed in Philadelphia five days, wan- 
dering about in his countrified ill-fitting clothes, 
seeing the sights; and was reprimanded, when his 
parents heard of it, for unseemly idling. His stay 
in New York was shorter, but he got a good idea 
of the city; and Fate not having arranged a con- 
venient accident, he reported to the authorities at 
West Point on the 30th or 31st of May. Two 
weeks later, to his great surprise, he passed the 
simple preliminary examination in reading, writ- 
ing, spelling, and arithmetic, and was enrolled as 
a cadet. He wTote his name in the Adjutant's 
book "Ulysses Hiram Grant," having made up his 
mind before leaving home that his initials, writ- 
ten the other way, H. U. G., would subject him to 
teasing and ridicule from his fellow-students. 
Congressman Hamcr, in asking for his appoint- 
ment, had, however, given it as Ulysses S. Grant, 
•knowing his mother's maiden name to be Simp- 
son, and evidently confusing the names of two of 
her sons. Ulysses asked to have the mistake cor- 
rected, but in vain. It stood Ulysses S. in the 
record, and of course the record was right. The 
fact that a boy might be, expected to know his own 



30 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

name had no weight, over against official red tape. 
As U. S. Grant it was posted with the names of 
other new-comers, and U. S. Grant it remained to 
the end of his Hfe. A group of first-class men, 
reading the list, began amusing themselves with 
the initials. "U. S.," they read,— "United States 
Grant — Uncle Sam Grant — Sam Grant"; and 
Sam Grant he was at the Academy from that 
hour. 

He was at that time a short, unimpressive 
youth, less than five feet two inches tall. The 
required height for entering the army is five feet. 
It is a little startling to reflect that the difference 
of an inch and a fraction in this boy's height 
might have changed the whole history of .the 
United States. 

Shy and silent, new to all the thousand and one 
customs and traditions of the famous war college, 
he was given the Book of Regulations and sent to 
report to the cadet officers. Being a "plebe" — 
that lowest of created animals in the eyes of upper 
classmen— he became at once a fair target for all 
the jibes and practical jokes and petty torments 
that lively boys, under military rule or out of it, 
contrive to inflict upon their fellows. 

After his first ordeal with the cadet corporals 
he was given his meager outfit — two blankets, a 
pillow, a chair, a water-pail, a broom, washbowl. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 31 

looking-glass, candlestick, and cocoannt (li|)per — 
and made to carry them amid the jeers of all the 
cadets he met, past the officers' qnarters to a dis- 
mal room on the npper lloor of the old North Bar- 
racks, a hnilding long since destroyed, where his 
fntnre room-mates gave him fnrllicr nngentle 
instrnction in what to do with them. 

Thns he hcgan his four years' course, a course 
which seemed to embrace a little of everything 
from scrubbing floors to differential calculus, and 
which he was expected to master, so far as he 
could judge from that first day's experience, with 
the aid of sarcasm and ridicule administered bv 
his fellow-students. 

The lawful discipline and restraints of the 
place were quite enough to bewilder a boy fresh 
from the care-free, go-as-you-please control of 
Jesse Grant. At home, if he got a substitute to do 
one piece of work, he was quite at liberty to take 
up another. Here all was military obedience and 
precision. There were regulations for walking, 
for standing, for talking; hours for this and 
''calls" for that; drums to beat him to dinner, to 
drill, and to bed. No hour was free from some 
strange and unaccustomed duty. Even his uni- 
form, tight to bursting, seemed made with a 
special view to keeping his body as uncomfortable 
as his mind ; and any failure to live up to these 



32 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

many and unfamiliar requirements was visited 
with plenteous demerit marks, and the haunting 
specter of final disgrace. Added to all these le- 
gitimate tortures, were the abuse and sly deviltry 
that went on behind the backs of the authorities. 
Grant got his share, though not as much as some 
of his comrades. The quiet reticence that hid his 
true feelings made it poor sport to tease him. He 
was small, too. It was not much fun to torment a 
fellow scarcely tall enough to be admitted to the 
Academy — and even then there was something in 
his clear, gray-blue eye that commanded respect. 
Of course he was homesick. "A military life 
had no charms for me," he wrote long afterward. 
*T had not the faintest idea of staying in the 
Army, even if I should be graduated, which I did 
not expect." But he put the best face upon it. 
He was there; he meant to stay and graduate if 
he could; and already the beauty of West Point 
was exercising its charm. He wrote a long letter 
to his cousin describing the Academy and his life. 
"I do love the place," he said. "It seems as though 
I could live here forever if my friends would only 
come too." The historic memories of the spot 
appealed to him, coming from a country too new 
to be burdened with tradition ; and the procession 
of great men that came and went — the President 
of the United States, generals, cabinet ministers, 



UT.VSSES S. GRANT 33 

and famous writers— filled his imagination with 
lively pictures of the outside world. 

The West Point year is divided into two parts. 
From June until late August the cadets camp in 
tents, living according to all the regulations of an 
army in the field, their time being entirely given 
up to drills, guard duty, pyrotechny, and engineer- 
ing. From September to June they live in bar- 
racks, studying, fencing, riding in the drill-hall, 
and being drilled as infantry on fine afternoons. 
The period of encampment began almost as soon 
as Grant entered the Academy. He found it very 
irksome. When the 28th of August came, the 
date for breaking up camp and going into bar- 
racks, he felt as though he had been at West Point 
for years, and that to stay until graduation would 
be to remain through all eternity. 

The life in barracks he liked better— or pre- 
tended to. He wrote to his cousin: "I slept for 
two months upon one single pair of blankets. 
Now this sounds romantic, and you may think it 
very easy, but I tell you what, Coz, it is tremen- 
dous hard. . . . Glad I am these things are over." 
Then passing on to the present he described the 
new routine. "We are now in our quarters. I 
have a splendid bed (mattress), and get along 
very well. Our pay is nominally about $28 a 
month, but we never see one cent of it. H we 



34 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

wish anything from a shoestring to a coat we 
must go to the Commandant of the Post and get 
an order for it, or we cannot have it. We have 
tremendous long and hard lessons to get, both in 
French and algebra. I study hard, and hope to 
get along so as to pass the examination in Janu- 
ary. This examination is a hard one, they say, 
but I am not frightened yet. If I am successful 
here you will not see me for two long years." "On 
the whole I like the place very much — so much 
that I would not go away on any account. . . . 
There is much to dislike, but more to like. . . . 
If I were to come home now with my uniform on, 
the way you would laugh at my appearance would 
be curious. My pants set as tight to my skin as the 
bark to a tree, and if I do not walk military— that 
is, if I bend over quickly or run — they are very 
apt to crack with a report as loud as a pi-siol. My 
coat must always be buttoned up tight to the chin. 
It is made of sheep's gray cloth, all covered with 
big round buttons. It makes one look very sin- 
gular." The long postscript of this lively boyish 
letter was devoted to the Academy's system of 
"black marks," not in a spirit of complaint, but as 
interesting and rather incomprehensible news. 
"They give a man one of these 'black marks' for 
almost nothing, and if he gets 200 a year they 
dismiss him. To show how easy one can get 






y-lj^ 



GENKKAI. C.KAM S SIC.NAI IRK IN AN AUIOGKArH ALBUM 
SUiNKL) HV \Vi:ST POINT MEN 



ULVSSKS S. r.RAXT 37 

these, a man by the name of Grant, of this State, 
got eight of these 'marks' for not going to church. 
He was also put under arrest so he cannot leave 
his room perhaps for a month; all this for not 
going to church. We are not only obliged to go 
to church, but must march there by companies. 
This is not Republican. . . . Contrary to the ex- 
pectation of you and the rest of my Bethel friends 
I have not been the least homesick. I would not 
go home on any account." 

Brave talk. Yet when a bill was introduced in 
Congress the following winter to abolish West 
Point, he read the debate with lively interest, hop- 
ing it would pass. A year later, though the days 
still dragged, he would have been sorry to have it 
succeed. 

Time certainly did not hang heavy for lack of 
employment. The course of study embraced top- 
ographical drawing, landscape and figure draw- 
ing ; higher mathematics ; surveying and calculus ; 
French; algebra; military and civil engineering; 
pyrotechny; artillery practice; c-avalry and in- 
fantry drill ; electricity ; magnetism ; optics ; as- 
tronomy; chemistry; trigonometry; mineralogy; 
rhetoric; moral philosophy; Kent's Commen- 
taries ; and dancing. 

He showed little enthusiasm about anything. 
Mathematics were easy for him, so he passed the 



38 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

January examination with credit; but he rarely 
read over a lesson the second time, and in French, 
the only other study at that time in the first year's 
course, his standing was lamentably low. "In 
fact, if the class had been turned the other 
end foremost, I should have been near head," 
he said in his Memoirs, when writing about his 
scholarship. "I never succeeded in getting 
squarely at either end of my class in any one 
study during the four years. I came near it in 
French, artillery, infantry and cavalry tactics, 
and conduct." 

There is a fine library at the Academy, from 
which the cadets are allowed to get books to read 
in their quarters. He made liberal use of this for 
a private course in English fiction, not down in 
the regulations, reading all of Bulwer's novels 
then published, Cooper, Marryat, Scott, Washing- 
ton Irving, and many others. Yet he kept a 
respectable if not brilliant place in his class, and 
on June 30, 1843, graduated twenty-first in a 
class of thirty-nine. "He always showed himself 
a clear thinker and a steady worker," says Pro- 
fessor Mahan, his teacher in engineering. "He 
belonged to the class of compactly strong men 
who went at their task at once and kept at it imtil 
they had finished ; never being seen, like the slack- 
twisted class, yawning, lolling on their elbows 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 39 

over their work, and looking as if just ready to 
sink down from mental inanity." 

He was also a singularly clean-lipped boy. Pro- 
fanity affected him like the beam-room of his 
father's tannery — as a nauseating thing to be kept 
away from. He tried to learn to smoke, but 
failed, and we know he did not drink, for he and 
some of his classmates entered into a compact to 
abstain from liquor for a year, in order to 
strengthen the resolution of one of their mates 
who seemed in danger of falling into bad habits. 

At the end of the first two years the class re- 
ceived the customary furlough— the one holiday 
in the four years' course, and he went home for a 
vacation which lasted from the end of June to the 
28th of August. "This," he tells us, "I enjoyed 
beyond any other period of my life." Yet there 
was no display of emotion at his home-coming. 
His family had seen him go away without a tear; 
they welcomed him back without demonstration. 
A fine new horse which had never been under 
harness was waiting for him in the stable, how- 
ever, and it can be imagined with what furtive 
pride the self-repressed mother noted every detail 
of change and improvement. As for the more 
talkative father, he probably had as much to say 
to the neighbors about "my Ulysses" as when he 
bored them with tales of his infant cleverness. 

8 



40 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

"Those ten weeks," the Memoirs assure us, "were 
shorter than one week at West Point." 

Then he and all his classmates were back again 
at the Academy, an increased number of demerit 
marks during the first month of the new term 
showing how hard it was for them to settle do-wn 
into their drudgery of drill and study. The last 
two years passed more rapidly than the first two, 
but they seemed five times as long as years in 
Ohio. Little happened to break their monotony. 
He served for a time as sergeant in one of the 
four companies into which the cadets are divided 
for military exercises, but in his senior year 
dropped back again to the rank of private. 

'T remember him," says one of his classmates, 
"as a plain, common-sense, straightforward 
youth; quiet, calm, thoughtful, and unaggressive; 
shunning notoriety; quite contented while others 
were grumbling; taking to his military duties in a 
very business-like manner; not a prominent man 
in the corps, but respected by all, and very popular 
with his friends. His sobriquet of 'Uncle Sam' 
was given to him there, where every good fellow 
has a nickname, from these very qualities ; indeed 
he was a very uncle-like sort of a youth. He was 
then and always an excellent horseman, and his 
picture rises before me as I write, in the old torn 
coat, obsolescent leather gig-top, loose riding pan- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 41 

taloons with spurs liiickled over them, going with 
his clanking saber to the (h^ill-liall." 

He was at his l)est in ihe saddle. The one real 
record that he made for liimself at the Academy, 
the one time that he excelled all his fellows, was at 
the final mounted exercises of his graduating 
class, when, riding a famous horse named York, 
he was called upon to clear the leaping-bar that 
the gruff old riding-master had placed higher 
than a man's head. He dashed out from his place 
in the ranks, a smooth-faced, slender young fel- 
low on a powerful chestnut-sorrel, and galloped 
down the opposite side of the hall; turned and 
came directly at the bar, the great horse increas- 
ing his pace as he neared it, and then, as if he and 
his rider were one, rising and clearing it with a 
magnificent bound. The leap is still recorded at 
the Academy as "Grant's upon York," where it 
has never been surpassed. 

It was natural that upon his graduation he 
should want to enter the cavalry, but the United 
States Army w^as very small at that time, number- 
ing barely 7500 men, and there was only one 
regiment of horse, or "dragoons" as they were 
called. That already had its full complement of 
officers. The Fourth Infantry being his second 
choice he was assigned to that as brevet second 
lieutenant. 



42 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

He still had no love for the Army. Only one 
moment of enthusiasm for the service had come to 
him in the four years. That was during his first 
encampment, when General Scott came to review 
the cadets, and loomed upon the little plebe in all 
the glory of his imposing person and military 
splendor. The lad, gazing upon him, thought he 
had never seen such a magnificent man, and with 
sudden prevision of what lay before him, saw him- 
self—not so big or so gorgeous, of course— but 
occupying the same exalted station. He breathed 
no syllable of this sudden ambition, for fear of 
ridicule, and the vision passed. His modest hope 
at the time of his graduation was to be detailed in 
the course of a year or two as Assistant Professor 
of Mathematics at the Academy, and after a term 
of service there to secure a permanent position in 
some college. 

Meantime all the members of the graduating 
class had leave of absence until the end of Septem- 
ber. He went back to Ohio, where another new 
saddle-horse awaited him ; but he could not enjoy 
this vacation as he had the former one. For the 
last six months at West Point he had been afflicted 
with a desperate cough, and he was very much 
run down, weighing only as much as he had at the 
time of entering the Academy, though he had 
grown six inches during the four years. There 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 43 

was a tendency to consumption in tlic family; two 
of Jesse Grant's children died of it, and the silent 
mother watched and said nothing", hut was 
troubled about the health of her soldier son. 

He, however, was far from thinking of his 
latter end. He had ne\cr been a dandy. Most of 
his demerits at the Academy had been for lack of 
promptness, or for little negligences in dress ; but 
now he developed a quite normal interest in his 
new uniform, which had to be ordered and sent to 
him after he learned that he had been assigned to 
the infantry and not to the dragoons. He longed 
to get it on, and see how it looked — more espe- 
cially to let others see how he looked in it. It 
came at last, and he rode forth in it to Cincinnati, 
feeling that he brightened the sunshine by his 
presence, and that he must be making as great an 
impression on the populace as General Scott had 
madeuponhim. But while theuniform was still very 
new two things happened which gave him a dis- 
taste for military splendor that lasted the rest of 
his life. In Cincinnati a ragged,- dirty little street- 
urchin, taking in with a quick glance his com- 
plaisant satisfaction, turned and called after him 
with wicked glee, ''Soldier, will you work? No 
siree. I 'd sell my shirt first !" The crestfallen 
brevet second lieutenant wheeled his horse and 
started for home. Opposite his father's house 



44 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

stood a tavern where cheer was dispensed for man 
and beast. The stableman was a dissipated old 
wag, who also discovered the young soldier's 
secret. Grant found him parading the street in 
solemn travesty of his own military walk, bare- 
foot, clad in a pair of sky-blue nankeen panta- 
loons, just the color of his new uniform trousers, 
with a strip of white cotton cloth sewed down the 
outside seams to imitate the stripes. A group of 
neighbors was watching him, convulsed with 
merriment, but Grant, crimson with mortification, 
could see no humor in the proceeding. 



Ill 

Ills L'.ArXISM OF FIRE 

LATE in September, 1843, Grant joined his 
/ regiment, the Fourth Infantry, at Jefferson 
Barracks, near St. Louis. His duties were Hght, 
though drill and roll-call came with j)rovoking 
frequency. Having brought with him his saddle- 
horse — the one on which he first aired his new 
uniform — he made many excursions in the neigh- 
borhood during his hours of leisure, and rode 
often "out on the Gravois Road" to White Haven, 
the family home of his classmate at the Academy, 
Frederick T. Dent. Colonel Dent, the master of 
White Haven, was an imposing, hot-tempered old 
gentleman, who lixcd in a comfortable farm- 
house surrounded by his slaves and his children, 
cjuite the ideal of a southern planter. He paid 
scant attention to his son's friend, but Mrs. Dent 
gave him a motherly welcome; and even after 
Fred went to join his regiment, the house full of 
young people continued to be the goal of many of 
his rides. The eldest daughter of the Dents, Julia, 
a girl of seventeen, he had not yet seen, for she 

45 



46 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

was spending the winter with friends in St. Louis. 
After her return White Haven became doubly at- 
tractive. Indeed, so many of his rides ended 
there, despite the old planter's frowning indiffer- 
ence — for Colonel Dent saw no merit in a young- 
ster whose salary was $779 a year, whose 
prospects were only slow promotion in the Army, 
and who was saddled with a troublesome cough — 
that the young lady had to bear much teasing 
about her "little lieutenant with the big epaulets." 
As for the little lieutenant himself, he did not 
realize what was happening to him. He probably 
thought in all seriousness that his mind was full 
of mathematics and history. According to the 
plan made before leaving West Point, he had 
asked to be detailed as Assistant Professor of 
Mathematics at the Academy, and felt that his 
chances were good to receive the appointment. 
Accordingly he laid out for himself a line of 
study, reviewing his West Point mathematics, 
reading history, and indulging for relaxation in 
an occasional novel. If that and his military 
duties were not enough to fully occupy his mind, 
there was the all-absorbing political question, the 
annexation of Texas, which was being discussed 
wherever discussion was possible, from the halls 
of Congress to the remotest cross-roads settle- 
ment. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 47 

Texas was a wide land with few inhabitants 
and great possibihties. Originally a part of Mex- 
ico, it had fought itself free, and after a few 
years of troubled independence was offering to 
become part of the United States. President 
Tyler and all the southern leaders eagerly wel- 
comed this, looking forward to a day when more 
slave states would be needed to keep their party in 
power, and planning to have those states carved 
out of Texas. To be quite frank, they had 
schemed for this result from the beginning —had 
helped colonize the country, helped in the revolt 
against Mexico, and most craftily encouraged the 
sentiment which now prompted its offer to join 
forces with the United States. On the other hand, 
people in the North were not at all pleased. Those 
who did not approve of slavery saw through the 
scheme of the southern leaders and denounced it, 
while others opposed it on the ground that, al- 
though it might be the destiny of Texas to come 
into the family of States, this was neither the time 
nor the way. 

Mexico, naturally enough, objected seriously. 
She had never formally acknowledged the inde- 
pendence of Texas, and claimed that it was still a 
part of Mexico. She claimed, moreover, that, 
even if Texas were free to join the United States, 
it had no right to take with it a large tract of 



48 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

territory that the revolutionists had never con- 
trolled, but which they now offered to our govern- 
ment. The possession of this vast triangle of 
land, lying between the Nueces river, the Rio 
Grande, and the coast, became the actual cause of 
war. 

President Tyler and his administration per- 
sisted in their plans. In December, 1844, Con- 
gress accepted the offer of Texas ; but long before 
that time a portion of the small United States 
Army had been ordered south "to observe the 
frontier." Early in May, 1844, one of the regi- 
ments stationed at Jefferson Barracks was sent to 
Fort Jessup in Louisiana, only twenty-five miles 
from the Texas border. That seemed to bring the 
possibility of war much nearer home. A few days 
later the Fourth Infantry was ordered to join it. 

Grant believed, like many others, that war with 
Mexico would be wholly unjust; but he was part 
of the Army, a soldier sworn to obey orders, and 
— so curiously are good and evil woven together 
in this life — this most honest young man not only 
fought from start to finish in the unjust war, but 
it brought him two of the greatest blessing:s a man 
can have — health, and a good wife. 

He was away on leave when the orders came. 
A messenger sent to call him back failed to find 
him; so it was only through the letter of a brother 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 49 

officer, received some days later, that he learned 
the news. Its first effect was to bring him a real- 
izing sense of his love for Julia Dent. He felt 
that he must see her before starting south, so, 
though he knew the Fourth Infantry was already 
well on its way, and that his obliging friend had 
packed up his belongings and taken them with 
him, he followed the strict letter of his leave, re- 
turned to Jelierson Barracks, reported to the com- 
mander, was ordered to join his regiment in so 
many days, and mounting his horse rode eagerly 
toward White Haven. The Gravois, a little creek 
too insignificant to be bridged, lay between him 
and the lady of his dreams. Usually it was only 
a trickling rivulet, but on this day of all days sud- 
den rains had filled it to overflowing, and he 
found the current eddying and swirling along its 
half-submerged banks. From childhood it had 
been a superstition with him never to turn back. 
In his present frame of mind he was in no mood 
to be stopped. He plunged in. Next instant his 
horse had been carried off its feet and was swim- 
ming hard to keep its head above water, while the 
current was bearing him rapidly down-stream. 
By good management on the part of both 
horse and rider they reached the opposite bank, 
little the worse for their adventure, except that 
the young man was wet through and through. A 



so THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

sorry figure to go a-courting, he still rode on, 
borrowed some dry clothes that did not fit him 
from one of the Dent boys, and, quite regardless 
of such details, pursued the suJDJect nearest his 
heart. It is difficult to imagine General Scott, 
Grant's boyish ideal of a soldier, treating personal 
appearance with such scant respect at a similar 
critical moment ; but Grant, like that other Loch- 
invar who esteemed bridges and floods of no ac- 
count, ''came out of the West," and made love, as 
he later made war, after a fashion of his own. 
His earnestness was rewarded. The borrowed 
garments, as he briefly records in his Memoirs, 
''answered every purpose," and when he went 
south he carried with him the promise of Miss 
Julia to become Mrs. Grant some day ; though the 
prudent lovers decided that for the present noth- 
ing was to be said about it — even to her family. 

He spent the next year at Camp Salubrity, near 
the town of Natchitoches, Louisiana, where the 
Fourth Infantry was waiting while President 
Tyler's game of politics played itself out to the 
end. The spot was well named, and life in the 
open air in these dry pine-scented uplands ban- 
ished forever the cough that threatened to carry 
the young lieutenant off in consumption. 'T have 
often thought," he wrote toward the end of his 
days, "that my life was saved and my health re- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 51 

stored by exercise and exposure enforced by an 
administrative act and a war, bt)lli of which I dis- 
approved." The AFexican War played strange 
pranks with the destinies of men. Among 
other things it made General Zachary Taylor, 
who also disapi)roved of it, President of the 
United States. 

In March, 1845, news reached the regiment 
that Congress had passed and the President ap- 
proved the bill to annex Texas. Soldiers and offi- 
cers began looking for marching orders. Grant, 
mindful of all a war might mean to him, obtained 
leave of absence and made a hurried trip to St. 
Louis to see Miss Dent and ask the consent of her 
parents to their engagement. It was given, 
grudgingly enough on the part of Colonel Dent, 
and the end of twenty days found him back again 
at Camp Salubrity. 

It was July before the expectea orders came, 
and then they only moved the regiment from 
Camp Salubrity into plague-stricken New Or- 
leans, where yellow fever raged, and the streets, 
to use Grant's own expression, "had the appear- 
ance of a continuous well-observed Sunday." 
Only once in two weary months of waiting did he 
see this sinister quiet broken. That was when a 
shot brought him to the window in the early 
dawn, to look down upon a duel — "a couple of 



52 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

gentlemen deciding a difference of opinion with 
rifles at twenty paces." It seemed as ghastly and 
unreal as the nightmare peace of those quiet 
streets. 

In September, 1845, welcome orders came for 
the Fourth Infantry to proceed to Corpus Christi 
at the mouth of the Nueces river on the very edge 
of the disputed territory. Here, indeed, the 
"Army of Observation" became the "Army of 
Occupation," for Corpus Christi lay on ground 
claimed by Mexico. Gradually the untidy little 
adobe hamlet, dear to the hearts of Mexican 
smugglers, became an orderly camp of about three 
thousand United States troops, under command 
of the forceful and unconventional General Zach- 
ary Taylor. Still there was no war. It was the 
intention of the government to bring about fight- 
ing, but it was necessary for its purpose that 
Mexico, and not the United States, should seem 
to commit the first hostile act. General Taylor 
knew perfectly well what was expected of him, 
but being a Whig, opposed to the President and 
the war, he took a grim pleasure in delaying the 
conflict as long as possible. He saw, however, 
that it must come, and drilled his little army vig- 
orously on the broad plains around Corpus 
Christi, in detail and in mass, separately and all 
the arms of the service together, preparing it to 




LlKl riNANI r ^- GKAN] ASH 1 1 1-' 1 1 I- N A N 1 ( Al- 1 L KW Al; 1) GENIiKAL) 
ALEXASDKK HAYS 



UT.VSSF.S S. GRANT 55 

the best of his great ability for the work that lay 
before it. 

Meantime the weeks rolled on, and the Army of 
Occupation found pleasure as well as lab(M- in the 
wide, sparsely settled land. For those who liked 
hunting- there was "'ame in abundance. For 
Grant, who had never been a sportsman, there 
was unfailing interest in the great droves of wild 
horses that roamed over the uninhabited country 
between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Mex- 
icans, quite unmindful of threatened hostilities, 
captured them and brought them to the Americans 
for sale, and many oflicers availed themselves of 
this means of getting mounts for the coming cam- 
paign. Grant, being an enthusiastic horseman, 
owned three, which seems a lil)eral allowance for 
a brevet second lieutenant on $779 a year ; though 
in a country where it cost nothing to feed them 
and little to purchase, the extravagance can be 
easily condoned. One unlucky day all three of 
them ran away and were never seen again. A 
brother officer, commenting on this misfortune, 
remarked, "Yes, I heard Grant lost five or six 
dollars' worth of horses the other day." We have 
Grant's own word for it that this "was a slander. 
They were broken to the saddle when I got them, 
and cost nearly twenty dollars !" 

In camp, as well as on the plain, the Army made 



56 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

amusement for itself. One of the enterprises in- 
dulged in by the younger officers was building and 
running a theater, themselves taking all the char- 
acters, male and female, in the plays. Grant took 
part with the others. The most ambitious play 
attempted was "Othello," in which he was cast for 
Desdemona because of his slight figure and 
pleasant voice. The lieutenant who was Othello, 
however, demurred, declaring he must have some 
one more exciting to inspire his love-making, and 
a real actress was imported from New Orleans to 
fill the need. 

Once or twice while stationed at Corpus Christi 
Grant obtained permission to go with a paymas- 
ter's train and cavalry escort to San Antonio and 
Austin. On one of these occasions he had an ad- 
venture as useful in its way as the horse-trade of 
his early childhood, or his experience with his 
new uniform. From unexpected reasons the 
party dwindled until he and a single companion 
were left to make the last stage of the homeward 
journey alone. The country was practically un- 
inhabited, though there were Indians lurking 
about, and white men one would rather not meet 
unarmed. They encountered no human being, 
but one night the universe seemed filled with the 
howling of wolves, so loud and fierce, and ap- 
parently so many, that Grant was quite sure there 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 57 

must be enough to devour their little party, horses 
and men, at a single meal. The tall prairie grass 
hid ihcni from view, and his companion, better 
versed in the way of wolves than he, kept steadily 
on. Grant followed, more from lack of courage 
to remonstrate and turn back, than from any 
relish in the adventure. At length his companion 
asked, quite casually, how many wolves he 
thought there were in the pack, and Grant, not to 
be outdone in coolness, replied with equal uncon- 
cern, "Oh, about twenty." A moment later they 
came upon the creatures. There w^ere just two of 
them, sitting upon their haunches, w^ith their 
mouths close together, filling all space with 
sound ! In the life at Corpus Christi Grant was 
learning many things — some from wolves, and 
some from General Taylor ; for all this riding and 
junketing and theater-acting was but the em- 
broidery on the warp and woof of army training, 
which went on ceaselessly under the watchful eye 
and caustic tongue of "Old Rough and Ready." 
A new^ President, James K. Polk, had come into 
office, but he was pledged to carry out the policy 
of his predecessor, and he could not w^ait forever. 
If the Mexicans would not show a proper spirit 
and fight "the invader" at the frontier, instead of 
selling him horses, it was clear that General Tay- 
lor's army would have to march south in search 



58 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

of a foe to repel it. Hints having proved useless, 
distinct orders were at last sent him, and on 
March 8, 1846, he started for the Rio Grande. 

Grant was now a second lieutenant, having re- 
ceived his promotion from brevet to full rank 
about the time he encountered the wolves. This 
promotion transferred him to the Seventh In- 
fantry, but being fond of his old regiment he 
asked permission to exchange back into it. He 
planned to make the march to the Rio Grande on 
foot— a resolution compounded of duty and 
necessity, because he felt that an officer of in- 
fantry ought to share the fatigues of his men, and 
he had recently lost his "five or six dollars' worth 
of horses." The remonstrances of his captain 
were, however, quite enough to change his mind, 
and the expenditure of a small sum, literally five 
dollars this time, made him possessor of a wild 
three-year-old colt. By the end of the first day 
he was also its master, though during that day his 
progress was most erratic, and his position in the 
marching column not always of his own choosing. 

There was not a settlement between Corpus 
Christi and the Rio Grande 125 miles away. The 
country between was a barren rolling prairie, 
with almost no streams, and only occasional 
pools of brackish water that had been scooped out 
by thirsty travelers, or made by the trampling of 



ULYSSKS S. GRANT 59 

many bufifalocs. The lcns:;tli of a day's march liad 
to be rcj^ulatcd by the (bstancc of these reservoirs 
one from another, and tlic thin l)kie column of 
Taylor's army looked very inadequate for con- 
([uering a country, as it toiled across tlic barren 
land from pool to pool. It found nothiuiJ^ to op- 
pose it. At one point the herd of wild horses 
appeared ahead, covering the plain as far as the 
eye could see, but enemies there were none, until 
the Colorado river was reached and the army set 
to work to get its artillery and supply trains, 
drawn by half-wild mules, across the brackish 
waters. Then from the bushes on the opposite 
shore the "assembly" rang out, and other military 
calls in numbers that indicated a mighty force to 
be at hand. The cavalry dashed into the stream, 
and the sounds melted away into silence. Like 
the wolves, these hidden enemies were far more 
numerous before they were counted. 

Arrived on the Rio Grande, General Taylor set 
about building a fort almost under the guns of the 
town of Matamoras which lay on the opposite 
bank. The Mexican cavalry, incensed at this, 
circled around, capturing such small bodies of 
Americans as ventured too far from camp. In 
this way two companies of dragoons were made 
prisoners, and several officers and men were 
killed— quite enough to serve the purpose of an 



6o THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

administration bent on war. The news traveled 
back to Washington, where it was hailed with de- 
light by the administration, and announced by 
President Polk to Congress in a special message 
full of zeal and bitterness. "The cup of forbear- 
ance had been exhausted," he declared ; Mexicohad 
"invaded our territory and shed American blood' 
upon American soil." The Mexicans had at last 
played into his hands. Congress speedily declared 
war, and General Taylor and his little army 
passed on to more serious things. On May 8 and 
9, 1846, Palo Alto and Resaca, the first real bat- 
tles of the Mexican War, were fought. In view 
of the fighting of later years, in which Grant 
bore such a conspicuous part, they were the 
merest skirmishes, insignificant in numbers and 
ridiculously primitive as to weapons on both sides. 
Taylor's men were armed with flint-lock muskets, 
and his artillery was drawn into position by oxen ; 
while the Mexicans used lances and spears, and 
their cannon might have been handed down from 
the days of Cortez. The solid shot from these 
out-of-date guns bounded along so slowly that at 
times the American infantry, seeing them coming, 
could open ranks and let them pass harmlessly 
through. 

It is all as unimpressive as a comic opera Vv^hen 
read about in a book sixty-odd years after the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT r,i 

event, by a g'cncration lliat makes war with ma- 
chine guns and a lumdred death-dealing inven- 
tions that were not dreamed of in 15^46. At the 
moment it was a very different matter. It was 
the first battle of our soldiers with a civilized foe 
for thirty years. In spite of tlie sordid way in 
which it had been brought to pass, it was War 
with all its possibilities of glory and duty and 
triumph— and once it was declared, the electric 
sympathy of every true heart at home leapt out 
across Texan sands to countrymen battling in a 
foreign land. 

To Grant, who had never seen fighting before, 
it was very much of a war. In spite of the 
leisurely cannon-balls and out-of-date equipment 
he saw his friends fall, killed or cruelly wounded, 
around him. It w^as in truth his baptism of fire. 
He thought General Taylor's responsibility very 
great; and when he first heard the sound of 
hostile guns, he was sorry that he had enlisted. 
But he bore his part coolly and well. The battle 
of Palo Alto was principally an artillery duel, 
lasting from three o'clock in the afternoon until 
dark. The soldiers lay down upon the field, ex- 
pecting to begin again next day, and slept as if 
they were in a palace. Next morning it was 
found that the enemy had retired. The captain 
of Grant's company was sent ahead with a body 



62 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

of picked men to locate the Mexican position. 
This left Grant in command of the company, an 
honor he considered very great. When word 
came for the whole army to advance, he led his 
little band into the sharpest of the fighting, 
and though in his autobiography he makes quiet 
fun of his achievement, saying that no doubt the 
battle of Resaca would have ended as successfully 
if he had not been there, it is evident that he and 
they did their best; and the best is not bad on a 
field where the commanding general, being 
urged not to expose himself to the fire, answers, 
"Let us ride a little forward where the balls will 
fall behind us." 

Unlike Palo Alto, Resaca was a fight at close 
range, '*a pell-mell affair, everybody for him- 
self," and ended in a fine rout of the Mexicans, 
which carried them through their own camp, 
where cooks were busy preparing dinner in an- 
ticipation of victory, on into the waters of the 
Rio Grande. 

"You want to know what my feelings were," 
Grant wrote in his letter home. "I do not know 
that I felt any peculiar sensation. War seems 
much less terrible to persons engaged in it than to 
those who read of the battles." "I scarcely 
thought of the probability or possibility of being 
touched myself." 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 63 

Of one sensation he could not lia\c been in 
doubt, bowcvcr, — a sensation of pride, when after 
the battle "Old Rough and Ready" looked with 
frowning- tenderness upon his young- soldiers and 
said : 

"Gentlemen, vou are veterans."' 



IV 

THE ROMANCE OF WAR 

PALO ALTO and Resaca seemed important 
enough to Taylor's "veterans," but their esti- 
mate of their own performance was modest, com- 
pared with the acclaim these victories received at 
home. The party in power magnified them for 
purposes of its own in rousing enthusiasm for the 
war, and every mother's son in the army became 
a hero in his home town and county newspaper; 
while every son's mother felt with trembling 
pride that her boy's valor had alone made the 
t.riumph possible. When the slow-moving mails 
brought back newspaper accounts of these bat- 
tles to the little army on the Rio Grande it had 
difficulty in recognizing itself or its own achieve- 
ments. 

As soon as he received notice of the formal 
declaration of war General Taylor transformed 
his "Army of Occupation" into an "Army of In- 
vasion" by moving it across the river and taking 
possession of the town of Matamoras. Here he 

64 



ULYSSKS S. GRANT 65 

remained until volunteers, of which Congress had 
authorized 50,000, arrived in sufficient numbers 
to warrant him in carrying out his further plan 
of campaign. This was to go up the Rio Grande 
to the town of Camargo, which was as far as men 
and provisions could be carried on boats, and 
then, making that town a base of supplies, to 
strike southwestward toward Montei»ey, the larg- 
est city in northern Mexico, from which point an 
attack could later be made through a pass in the 
Sierra Madre Mountains on Mexico city, the 
capital. 

It was the i8th of August before the army 
started, most of the men on little steamers, 
the cavalry, artillery, and Grant's brigade march- 
ing along the southern bank of the river. One 
day's experience showed that marching in the sun 
at that season of the year was out of the question 
for Northern men. Thereafter the army pro- 
ceeded by night, moving under southern stars, 
and on through dim dawns that gradually bright- 
ened [nto tlife intolerable heat and sunlight that 
forced them to seek shelter and wait for night to 
come again. 

At Camargo Grant's trustworthiness and good 
sense were recognized in a manner more flattering 
than agreeable. He was made quartermaster and 
commissary for the Fourth Infantry, a position 



66 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

of no small responsibility and many annoyances — 
housekeeper to the regiment, it might be called, 
for he had to see to feeding the men and trans- 
porting all tents and supplies. The pack-train that 
carried these was in itself an education in patience 
and self-control. "There were not men enough in 
the army," Grant tells us, "to manage that train 
without the help of Mexicans who had learned 
how." After the troops had started on their 
march "the tents and cooking utensils had to be 
made into packages so that they could be lashed to 
the backs of the mules. Sheet-iron kettles, tent- 
poles, and mess-chests were inconvenient articles 
to transport in that way." By the time the train 
was ready to start the mules first saddled would 
be tired of standing with their loads, and would 
try to get rid of them by all sorts of mulish 
devices ; sometimes by bucking and kicking until 
the burden was scattered, sometimes by rolling, 
and sometimes when tent-poles made part of their 
load, by getting them hopelessly tangled up with 
the neighboring trees. "I am not aware," Grant 
continues, "of ever having used a profane ex- 
pletive in my life, but I would have the charity to 
excuse those who may have done so if they were 
in charge of a train of Mexican pack-mules at the 
time." That he acted as quartermaster and kept 
his temper shows the stuff of which he was made- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 67 

Indeed he was too good a quarlcnnaster for his 
(Twn happiness. He not only kept his temper; he 
performed tlic cUities so acceptably that he was not 
afterward allowed to give them up, though he 
asked to be permitted to return to his regular 
duties. As quartermaster his place during an 
engagement was with the wagons in the rear, and 
not on the firing line, but he never seemed able to 
resist the attraction that led him into action. At 
Montere}', when that sleepy, peaceful old adobe 
town devel()i:)ed into a citadel where every house 
was a fortress and every street an avenue of 
death, he was in the thick of it. On September 
2 1 St he was with a charge where one third of the 
men were shot down in a few minutes, and where 
he, being the only one on horseback, was a 
special target for Mexican bullets. On the 23d 
he found himself near the central plaza with a 
body of men w4io could neither move forward nor 
back, because of the shower of lead. When their 
supply of ammunition got low Grant volunteered 
to go for more. Flinging himself on his horse 
Comanche-fashion, with one foot holding the 
cantle of the saddle, and one arm around his 
horse's neck, his body pressed close to the animal 
on the side aw-ay from the enemy, he started at a 
full run. At every street crossing a volley of 
bullets whistled after him, but he went at such 



68 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

speed that he was already out of range and under 
cover of the next group of houses before the 
sharp-shooters had taken aim. At one point in 
this mad gallop there was a four-foot wall for 
the horse to leap. Grant made him take it, still 
clinging to his side. It was a daring exploit, 
much talked of in the regiment, but in spite of its 
conspicuous gallantry his name does not appear in 
official records of the battle. 

General Taylor's army remained in and near 
Monterey until midwinter, waiting for the poli- 
ticians at Washington to decide what was to be 
done next. They were in something of a quan- 
dary. They must have victory, because Texas 
was necessary to their plans; but on the other 
hand, General Taylor's successes were making 
him so popular that if these successes continued 
the Whigs were likely to elect him President. 
This would not suit the Democrats at all. It was 
embarrassing that they had no general of their 
own political party with which to supplant him. 
General Scott, the only other available man, was 
a Whig like Taylor, and was also known to 
cherish hopes of being President. After much 
deliberation it was decided to send him to Mexico 
in spite of this. He was of higher rank than 
General Taylor, and had different ideas about 
carrying on the war. Ordering him south would 




ZACHAKV TAYLOR (1852) 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 71 

appear to discredit General Taylor, and it was 
hoped the political rivalry of the two men would 
result in the political failure of both, while out of 
it the country would reap military victory, and 
the Democratic party the glory of a successful 
war. It was an ingenious solution of the difficulty 
— if Destiny had not had other plans. 

General Scott was loath to go. He felt that the 
administration was hostile to him, and objected to 
being placed, as he expressed it, between two 
fires — one from Mexico in front, the other from 
Washington in the rear. President Polk and his 
cabinet, however, assured him of their confidence, 
and promised all that he asked for in the way of 
troops and supplies— promises which they broke 
the minute he was safely on the way. They sent 
him only about half the troops agreed upon, and 
withheld material of war in proportion, while al- 
most every one of the higher officers detailed to 
serve under him was his political or personal 
enemy. 

But the old General's fighting spirit was roused. 
He had been sent to Mexico against his will. He 
would show them what he could do. The result 
was a march which for sheer bravado and swag- 
gering audacity would have been criminal if it 
had not proved successful. Scott had never 
liked Taylor's plan of invading Mexico from 



7^ THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

the north; so, disregarding that General's pro- 
tests, he withdrew most of his regular troops and 
ordered them to the seaport of Vera Cruz, which 
lies almost directly east of the city of Mexico. 
Then, when soldiers from the north had been sent 
him so that he had a column of ten or twelve thou- 
sand men, he started straight into the hostile 
country, to invade a nation of seven or eight mil- 
lion people, cross mountain ranges, and finally 
capture its chief city. 

He began by laying siege to Vera Cruz, that old 
walled town founded by Cortez when he came 
across the seas three hundred years earlier in 
search of gold. Vera Cruz lay on a sandy beach, 
guarded at that season of the year quite as much 
by the deadly vomito or yellow fever as by cannon 
and armed men. On the 28th of March, just a 
year after General Taylor had appeared on the 
banks of the Rio Grande, it surrendered to Gen- 
eral Scott. Then, knowing that his men remained 
in the poisonous low lands at the peril of their 
lives, he started them toward Jalapa, the next 
town of importance on the road to Mexico city. 

The land of Mexico rises in a series of giant 
steps. First, the torrid sea-level, with its fevers, 
and its soil covered with cactus and other forbid- 
ding plants; then low hills that lead to upland 
plains very like the prairies of Texas ; then again 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 73 

higher hills, almost mountains, with thick tropical 
vegetation, plume-like palms, strange parasites, 
and gaud}- flowers. Beyond these again is an- 
other plain, semi-arid, but capable of great culti- 
vation, 7000 feet above the sea, from which spring 
lofty mountains that tower over the whole, white 
with eternal snow. Every degree of climate was 
lo be met w ilb in ibis march of 260 miles from 
the sea-coast to the capital city. Grant, though 
busy with his quartermaster's duties, which were 
made exceeding varied by this gamut of climates 
and physical conditions, had eyes for everything 
that was strange or new. His letters home, writ- 
ten sometimes with sword belted on and pistol 
within reach, were full of detail about the things 
he saw— the half-naked brown men, the trees, 
and the brilliant birds whose songs fell so far 
short of the promise of their plumage. He had 
longed for travel. Here were both sight-seeing 
and adventure, and he enjoyed them to the full. 

It was at Cerro Gordo, on the road to Jalapa, 
just where the mountains begin, that Scott en- 
countered his first opposition, in the army of 
General Santa Anna. This man, one of the 
picturesque figures in Mexican history, a profes- 
sional revolutionist, now fighting for the govern- 
ment, now warring against it, and so frequently 
its chief magistrate that he might be called its 



74 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

intermittent president, was bold, skilful, un- 
scrupulous, and as merciless a murderer of 
prisoners as ever escaped unhanged. In this 
campaign he showed himself incredibly swift and 
daring. Learning through a captured letter that 
General Scott meant to weaken General Taylor's 
force in northern Mexico, he conceived the plan 
of fighting and beating each of the American gen- 
erals in turn — a plan which involved not only two 
great battles, but a march of a thousand miles 
over barren wastes, where the sun beat with 
scorching fury by day and a deadly chill struck at 
the health of his soldiers by night. No Northern 
arm}^ could have attempted it. On February 226. 
he faced General Taylor's army at Buena Vista, 
grandiloquently gave him an hour in which to 
surrender, was answered in terms more forcible 
than polite that all eternity would not suffice for 
that, and was beaten with a thoroughness that 
sent the army of brown men spinning southward, 
and landed General Taylor in the presidential 
chair. Yet, by the 15th of May Santa Anna was at 
Cerro Gordo with a fresh army, prepared to resist 
Scott's march into the interior. The place chosen 
was a long narrow pass in the mountains, over 
which towered heights crowned with artillery. 
The road, said to have been built by Cortez, was 
defended at every turn. Below it yawned deep 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 75 

valleys and sheer mountain walls. Direct attack 
and a flank movement seemed eciually impossible ; 
but General Scott was not without resourceful 
men. Robert E. Lee, George B. McClellan, and 
others destined to be famous in the War of the 
Rebellion, aided in cutting a road where Santa 
Anna thought that not even a mountain goat 
could venture. Silently but gleefully men dragged 
guns along this secret way; let them down by 
ropes over precipices, dragged them up again on 
the farther side, and on the night of May 17th, 
while the Mexicans slept, planted their batteries 
directly behind those of their enemies. The sur- 
prise was complete. Santa Anna and his reserves 
fled. Three thousand prisoners were taken, as 
well as arms and stores. So close was the pursuit 
that Santa Anna's carriage and mules, and, it is 
said, his wooden leg, fell into the hands of Gen- 
eral Scott, who returned these personal belong- 
ings, while he paroled the prisoners and destroyed 
the materials of war. Grant's regiment w^as in 
this fight, but not very actively engaged. 

The army pushed on to Jalapa, w^hich lies in a 
region of perpetual spring. Grant thought it the 
most beautiful spot he had ever seen. After rest- 
ing it went on again to Perote on the upper plain, 
where a strong fortress opened its doors to the 
invading army without firing a shot. The spirit 

5 



76 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

of fight had gone out of the people, and Santa 
Anna retreated to make his last stand at the 
city of Mexico. Indeed, all through the war the 
Mexicans were at heart inclined to be friendly. 
They fought the Americans when ordered to do 
so, but bore no resentment. They were frankly 
grateful for the good government established by 
our commanding generals in their captured cities, 
they assisted in mastering the vexing mule-trains, 
and though they might shoot at the invaders as an 
army, were not averse to knowing them indi- 
vidually as paymasters or as friends. 

At Jalapa General Scott had to meet another 
difficulty. Almost half of his troops were volun- 
teers, whose terms of service would expire before 
he could hope to finish the war. If he kept them 
as long as he had a right to do before sending 
them home, they would reach Vera Cruz and be 
forced to wait there for their ships at a season 
when the dreaded vomito was raging its worst. 
There was no battle pending, no real reason for 
asking this sacrifice, since in the end he must lose 
them before the final battles of the war. He dis- 
missed them at once, and faced the rest of his 
campaign with only 5000 men. Perhaps this was 
easier for him than it might have been had he 
cherished more respect for volunteers. Possibly 
his anger against the administration moved him 



ULYSSES S. GRANT y-j 

to attempt the final stages of his task without its 
help. 

Piiebla, the finest city in Mexico next to the 
capital, likewise fell into Scott's hands without a 
struggle. The army needed rest. It remained 
there until August, when, more troops having 
been sent him, Scott's force again numbered 
10,000 men. Two Americans who had long lived 
in the city of Mexico evaded Santa Anna's watch- 
ful eye, and came to ofifer themselves as guides. 
On the 7th of August the march once more began. 
Scott, at this point, abandoned all attempt to bring 
provisions for his army from Vera Cruz, and 
trusted to the country he passed through to fur- 
nish the necessary supplies. Some of the loftiest 
mountains on our continent lie between Puebla 
and the city of Mexico. Rio Frio, the pass over 
which the army was led, is 11,000 feet above the 
sea. It might easily have been defended, but 
Santa Anna chose to make his defense in the 
capital itself. Scott's army reached the top unhin- 
dered and looked down upon the city, lying, as 
most of the Mexican cities lie, in a plain sur- 
rounded by hills. Three shining lakes guarded it 
on the south and east, fields green as emeralds 
from recent rains pressed close about it, and noble 
mountains, one above another, formed the back- 
ground of the view. It was all that fancy had 



78 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

painted it — a fit ending for their march through 
tropic growths and over history-haunted plains. 

But the town was not yet theirs. Right across 
their way rose a rocky hill, fortified at base and 
top, and Santa Anna's army outnumbered them 
three to one. Santa Anna's men occupied not only 
the town, but various villages in the plain west of 
the city of Mexico. To reach them was a ques- 
tion of engineering, to fight them a question of 
endurance and skill. It was decided to skirt the 
lakes on the south, and to approach the town from 
the rear. The first point assaulted was Contreras, 
on the morning of the 20th of August. The fight 
lasted less than half an hour, when the terrorized 
Mexicans streamed back over the causeway be- 
tween the lakes into their city, crying that the 
Yankees were at their heels. Next came Cheru- 
busco, a hamlet in a level country of fields marked 
off by ditches, its stronghold an old church forti- 
fied until it looked unassailable. Here too the 
Mexican flag went down, and the Stars and 
Stripes floated in its place. 

Writing about it years afterward Grant as- 
serted that the strategy and tactics of General 
Scott on this day were faultless, and that he could 
have entered the city then and there if he had 
tried. Had he done so he would have robbed his 
young lieutenant of two brilliant exploits, for it 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 79 

was in the last days of the fighting, at Molino del 
Rey and Chapultepec a fortnight later, that he 
won his brevets for gallant conduct on the field. 

After the fight of August 20th a truce was 
agreed upon while terms of peace should be dis- 
cussed. But negotiations dragged, the truce was 
broken and on the 4th of September General Scott 
declared it at an end. On the 8th occurred the battle 
of Molino del Rey, "the King's Mill," a one-story 
stone structure surrounded by a wall, once a 
powder mill, and valuable to the Mexicans now, 
not only for the grain that was stored in it, but 
because, with a protecting breastwork of sand- 
bags on its flat roof, it made a formidable fortress. 
Between it and the city rose Chapultepec, a hill 
with abrupt sides, some three hundred feet high, 
crowned with fortifications. 

Troops were moved up to within striking dis- 
tance of Molino del Rey during the night, and in 
the early morning an assault was made, the mill 
taken, and its defenders forced back upon Chapul- 
tepec, before that fortress awoke to a realization 
of what was happening. Grant was in the fore- 
front of this assault, and seemed to be every- 
where at once. He rescued his wounded friend 
Dent from death at the hands of a Mexican inside 
the mill, climbed with a few men to the roof, 
using an uptilted cart as a means of approach, 



8o THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

and received the surrender of half a dozen offi- 
cials who had been caught there unable to escape. 
For this day's work he received the brevet most 
coveted by soldiers, that for gallant and meri- 
torious conduct in battle. 

On the 13th, in the assault on Chapultepec, he 
bore an even more conspicuous part, finding and 
opening the way for an advance along the San 
Cosme Road that leads into the city ; and later pos- 
sessing himself of a church— after a brief but 
spirited colloquy in faulty Spanish with the priest 
in charge of it— dragged a mountain howitzer 
up into its belfry, and from that elevation dropped 
shot down among the enemy behind the city gate. 
This so pleased General Worth, his division com- 
mander, that he sent for the young man, compli- 
mented him highly, and ordered another gun to 
be placed beside the one already doing such good 
work. A lieutenant must never know more than 
his division commander— that is the first rule of 
the service. It would have been the height of 
impertinence for Grant to explain to General 
Worth that there was room for only one gun at a 
time in the belfry. He saluted, thanked him, 
took the proffered howitzer, and made no attempt 
to use it. 

Chapultepec ended the fighting in the war with 
Mexico. That night the troops of Grant's division 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 8i 

cut their way through the soft walls of the adobe 
houses, ever toward the city gates, but next morn- 
ing there was no need for further progress. Santa 
Anna and his army had decamped. A day or two 
later Scott's troops entered the city. The streets 
were deserted. A few shots were fired by unseen 
persons, and one of them killed Lieutenant Sidney 
Smith of the Fourth Infantry, by whose death 
Grant became first lieutenant. He was also 
brevetted captain for gallantry at Chapultepec, 
his rank to date from the day of the battle. 

He had entered the army as a brevet second 
lieutenant. He fought in every battle in the Mex- 
ican War with the single exception of Buena 
Vista, and came out at the end only first lieuten- 
ant with the brevet of captain. A poor return 
certainly, in rank and pay, but of incalculable ad- 
vantage in training and experience. He had been 
under the command of two able generals, as 
opposite in nature as day and night, and he 
learned from both. Taylor was called by his 
admirers "Old Rough and Ready." Scott's 
detractors called him "Fuss and Feathers." 
From Taylor Grant learned simplicity in army 
regulations, indifference to ceremony, quickness 
in seizing a chance advantage and pressing it to 
its final conclusion, and the useful habit of mov- 
ing about among his troops and seeing things 



82 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

with his own eyes. From Scott he learned 
thoroughness of discipline, how to cut loose from 
a base of supplies and live upon the enemy's coun- 
try, and that it is cheaper to parole prisoners of 
war than to feed them. From others he learned 
different lessons, equally important. From Gen- 
eral Worth, his division commander, nervous, 
apprehensive, ordering his men about from place 
to place and tiring them unnecessarily, he learned 
how not to command an army. As quartermaster 
and commissary he learned the all-important les- 
sons of how to feed and care for soldiers on the 
march. From the wolves howling in the prairie- 
grass he learned that noise does not necessarily 
mean strength. This season of the Mexican War 
was his post-graduate course in the profession of 
arms. 

It was also the happiest and most romantic 
time of his hfe. He was young, he was well, he 
was fortunate in love. He was traveling in 
strange lands and seeing strange sights. There 
was a joyous buoyancy about him and his work, 
whether struggling with refractory pack-mules 
or leading a half dozen men in a daring advance 
between pattering Mexican bullets. It was the 
heyday of his youth. The mystery of the night 
marches ; the wonder of strange foliage and bril- 
liant-hued birds ; the majesty of lofty mountains ; 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 83 

the picturesque and bloody history of Cortez and 
his band, vvlio marched in greed of gold over the 
same path three hundred years before ; the child- 
like brown people who fought him by day and 
w^elcomcd him to their dances by night ; the great 
herds of wild horses, and the wilder fighting of 
enemies and friends— all this remained in his 
mind all the days of his life— the very romance 
of soldiering and war. 



V 

THE MAN WHO COULD NOT SUCCEED 

GENERAL SCOTT took up his quarters in 
the ''Halls of the Montezumas," the great 
palace on the central plaza of the city of Mexico, 
and from there issued wise orders for governing 
the town. The army was obliged to remain in 
Mexico for some months yet, for the treaty of 
Guadelupe-Hidalgo, the formal treaty of peace, 
was not signed until February 2, 1848, after 
which it took time to send it to Washington and 
secure the approval of the Senate. Officers and 
soldiers were anxious to get home, but amused 
themselves as best they could while waiting. 
There were bull-fights— of which Grant attended 
just one and no more — there was monte, the na- 
tional gambling game, which found its votaries 
among the Americans, there were the native 
dances, and there were excursions to points of 
interest in the neighborhood. 

As for Grant, he was kept fully occupied. His 
duties as quartermaster and commissary went on 
uninterruptedly, for soldiers eat as much in times 

84 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 85 

of peace as in war. The men were also in need 
of clothing, and that had to be manufactured on 
the spot, by native tailors, from such materials as 
could be found. One officer was detailed to at- 
tend to this for the entire army, but the Mexican- 
made "Yankee uniforms" were in such demand 
that it required vigilance and diplomacy to secure 
a just share for the Fourth Infantry. Grant also 
opened a bakery for the benefit of the regimental 
fund which furnished extra pay for the musicians, 
ten-pin alleys, books, magazines, and similar 
luxuries for the men. The army ration was 
eighteen ounces per day of either bread or flour, 
and as one hundred pounds of flour made one 
hundred and forty pounds of bread, the saving 
was considerable if the commissary chose to buy 
flour and turn it into bread. Grant did this for 
his own regiment, and got a contract from the 
Chief Commissary to bake a large quantity of 
hard bread for the army besides. In eight or nine 
weeks he made more money for the regimental 
fund in this way than his own pay amounted to 
during the entire war. Regimental bands at that 
time were paid partly by the government, and 
partly by the soldiers themselves. Out of this 
enterprise of Grant's the musicians of the Fourth 
Infantry received the money which had been due 
them for months. 



86 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Grant found time, in spite of these varied occu- 
pations, to join a party of officers who cHmbed 
Popocatapetl, the highest volcano in America, 
and afterward visited Mexico's wonderful caves, 
—a fairy-tale of an expedition, in which the 
wrathful mountain defeated their efforts to reach 
its top by bad weather and a visitation of snow- 
blindness that kept them prisoners for a whole 
day in a mountain hut, until they acknowledged 
their defeat and started down, the blind leading the 
blind, those who could see a very little leading as 
best they might the horses of those who could not 
see at all. At the mountain's foot the trouble left 
them as suddenly as it had come, and they went on 
their way, which led them, after the wonderful 
manner of Mexico, from snow levels through all 
gradations of climate and foliage to the tropics, 
and then down into the bowels of the earth, 
through an underground forest of stalactites and 
stalagmites as wonderful as it was uncanny. 

Soon after this came welcome orders home. 
On the journey back to the sea-coast the one un- 
pleasant episode of his life in Mexico happened. 
All buying and selling between the army and the 
Mexicans was on a cash basis, and as regimental 
quartermaster he had to have money to pay for 
everything he bought. In this way $1000 quar- 
termaster's funds were in his possession. Find- 




GENERAI. WINFIEI.O SCOTT 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 89 

Ing that the lock of his chest had been tampered 
with, he carried the money for safe-keeping to his 
friend Captain Gore to be locked in his trunk. A 
few nis^hts afterward Gore's trunk was stolen 
bodily from his tent. Grant was of course deeply 
distressed. A statement of the facts was prepared 
and forwarded to Washington, with the sworn 
testimony of his brother officers that he was in no 
way to blame. Some years later a bill was intro- 
duced in Congress to relieve him of the respon- 
sibility of this $1000. It was not passed until 
twelve years after the robbery; after he had won 
Donelson and become a famous man. 

The first thing Grant did on reaching the 
United States was to apply for leave of absence 
and hurry to St. Louis, where, on August 22, 
1848, he was married to Julia Dent at her father's 
home. He had given a good account of himself 
in the Mexican War. Two brevets for gallant 
conduct, special mention in the reports of four of 
his superior officers, and a record as quarter- 
master that remains unexcelled, was not a bad 
showing for twenty-six months of active service. 
Old Colonel Dent's opposition was entirely con- 
quered, and the wedding was a merry one. 

He took his bride to visit his relatives and 
friends in Ohio. After a few weeks they joined 
his regiment at Detroit. Almost at once he was 



90 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

ordered to Sackett's Harbor on the bleak shore of 
Lake Ontario, not very far from the spot where 
his great-grandfather and great-uncle were 
killed in the French and Indian War. He was 
still quartermaster, and should have been allowed 
to stay at Detroit, the headquarters of the regi- 
ment. Some personal grudge of another officer 
prompted the change. He appealed to higher 
authority and was upheld, but in the meantime 
winter closed in, boats ceased running, and he 
was obliged to remain at the undesirable post until 
spring. Mrs. Grant made his modest quarters 
cozy and homelike. She was fond of society, and 
like her husband would have preferred Detroit, 
but they made the best of it, and their life, though 
very quiet, was also happy. Grant had shaved oif 
the beard he brought back from Mexico. He 
looked rather young, rather grave when his face 
was in repose. The one extravagance he allowed 
himself was a good horse. His men liked him for 
his kindness and freedom from airs of supe- 
riority. He spoke quietly and never blustered and 
ordered them about. This unaggressive manner, 
and a certain lounging effect of being always at 
leisure, made a poor impression on new acquain- 
tances. People sometimes asked why he had been 
made quartermaster — whether it was because he 
knew less than any man in the regiment. Such a 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 91 

question was apt to meet a warm answer, to the 
effect that he was competent for any duty that 
came his way, but the fact remains that he had 
his detractors, both in and out of the army. In 
April he was ordered back to Detroit, where, as 
he says in his Memoirs, "two years were spent 
with few important incidents." After that came 
another winter at Sackett's Harbor; then, in the 
spring of 1852 the Fourth Infantry was ordered 
to the Pacific coast. Mrs. Grant could not accom- 
pany her husband. She and her little son went to 
stay with Colonel Dent at St. Louis until Lieuten- 
ant Grant should be able to send for them. 

The regiment, a little over seven hundred 
strong, sailed on the old steamer Ohio from New 
York for Aspinwall on the 5th of July. The boat 
was horribly crowded, having its full complement 
of passengers before the Fourth Infantry came 
aboard; and the eight-day journey to the Isthmus 
was anything but pleasant. It was the wet season. 
Every day torrents of rain alternated with blaz- 
ing tropical sunlight, and the streets of Aspinwall 
w^ere eight or ten inches under water. Passengers 
across the Isthmus had to be carried part way by 
boat, part way by the unfinished Panama railroad, 
and part way by mules, though the whole distance 
is only a few miles. A steamship company in 
New York had contracted to take the regiment 



92 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

to California, including this Isthmus transit. 
Grant's business was to care for the public prop- 
erty in his charge, and see that the contract was 
carried out. It took him six weeks to accomplish 
it — six weeks of nightmare-striving against 
lying agents, insufficient transportation, the rains, 
and the cholera, which speedily got a foothold in 
his camp and raged with deadly effect. His ex- 
perience in Mexico, as well as his responsibility as 
quartermaster, made him the natural leader. He 
attended to everything, appeared never to sleep, 
carried the whole burden alone. He sent the well 
people on ahead. The captain and doctors went 
with them, leaving him to battle alone with the 
scourge. About one seventh of those who left 
New York with the regiment died. 

Early in September the rest of the regiment 
reached San Francisco. A few weeks later it was 
ordered to Fort Vancouver, near the little settle- 
ment which afterward grew into the city of Port- 
land, Oregon. Here Grant remained one year. 
The Indians were peaceful. There was nothing 
in the line of duty but his dull round of quarter- 
master's tasks. He found few congenial friends 
at the post, and heard seldom from his family or 
the outside world. For six gray months the sun 
scarcely shone, fog and rain combining to turn the 
earth into a saturated sponge. His thoughts were 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 93 

not gay. No man could pass through such an 
experience as his upon the Isthmus without hav- 
ing it leave a trace behind. When he turned 
toward the future the outlook was scarcely 
brighter. The cost of living was very high, and 
on his pay he saw no prospect of having his wife 
and son and the younger baby that had been born 
since he left home, come out to join him. He was 
a devoted husband and father, and this separation 
from them was hard to bear. Being a silent man, 
he said little to any one about his troubles ; but a 
sergeant to whom he was kind tells how Grant 
opened a letter from home one day and showed 
him on the last page a drawing of a baby's fat 
little hand, traced by the mother in pencil to show 
its size— and how he folded the letter quickly and 
walked away, not trusting himself to speak. 

When spring came he tried to add to his income 
and give himself employment by entering into 
partnership with three other officers to raise po- 
tatoes. He bought a team of horses, worn out by 
their trip across the plains, nursed them into con- 
dition, and himself did most of the work of break- 
ing ground and caring for the crop. The yield 
was enormous ; but every one on the Pacific coast 
seemed inspired to plant potatoes at the same mo- 
ment. They became a drug on the market, and 
the partners were glad when a sudden rise in the 



94 THE BOYS^ LIFE OF 

Columbia river washed their crop away and 
saved them the trouble of digging it out of the 
ground. He tried cutting and shipping ice to San 
Francisco, and also buying meat -for the same 
market ; but each venture resulted in failure, leav- 
ing him deeper and deeper in debt. 

In July, 1853, the death of another officer pro- 
moted him to the captaincy of a company 
stationed at Humboldt Bay, 240 miles north of 
San Francisco. He heard of his promotion in 
September and started at once to his new post. 
It was a lonely place, reached only by an occa- 
sional sailing ship from San Francisco. As 
captain he had even less to do than as quarter- 
master, and his colonel was thoroughly uncon- 
genial to him. The weary winter dragged along, 
gray and dismal like the preceding one, with an 
added gloom for him in the knowledge that his 
brother officers thought ill of him, and expected 
to see him fail. He held out until the uncertain 
mails brought him his commission as captain. On 
April II, 1854, he acknowledged its receipt, ac- 
cepting the promotion; and on the same day 
wrote his resignation from the army, asking that 
it take effect on the 31st of the following July. 

Whether it is true, as rumor has it, that he was 
requested by his colonel to do this, whether cold 
disapproval of his fellow-officers drove him to the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 95 

step, or whether he hecanie convinced that he 
could not make a hving in the service for his wife 
and children, nobody really knows. The last 
supposition is quite enough to account for his act. 
There is nothing in the official correspondence to 
show his motive for resigning, or to cast one 
breath of scandal upon his name. 

He was almost penniless. The little he had 
been able to save had been staked and lost in busi- 
ness ventures. A few men owed him money, but 
it was easier to pin down a drop of mercury than 
to make them pay. A friend found him in a little 
miners' hotel in San Francisco, haggard and 
hopeless, all the youth gone out of him. Through 
his kindness Grant was able to reach Watertowm, 
New York. One of his chief debtors lived at 
Sackett's Harbor, close by. He hired a horse and 
rode over there, but did not even see the man he 
had come so far to find. Much discouraged he re- 
turned to New York city, w^here Captain Simon 
B. Buckner and other West Point classmates 
befriended him until his father sent money with 
which he could get back to Ohio. 

His father w^as greatly distressed at his resig- 
nation, and had written to Jefiferson Davis, who 
was then Secretary of War, asking that he be 
reinstated. Of course no attention was paid to 
this, beyond a courteously formal reply. The 



96 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

home-coming was not a happy one. Old Jesse 
was sorely hurt at the apparent failure of all the 
hopes he had built around his first-born. He 
looked at his younger sons, beginning a career as 
prosperous merchants, and remarked with set lips 
that West Point had spoiled one of his sons for 
business ; to which Grant replied humbly enough, 
"I guess that is about so." The gentle, silent 
mother was glad to have him back. She seemed 
to realize that he had escaped a great danger by 
leaving the army, and to sympathize with the 
battle he must wage— but as usual it was a word- 
less sympathy. The boys of the town, who had 
mocked at his new uniform, and later thrilled 
with delight when a bit of reflected glory fell on 
them after his return from the Mexican War, 
now looked at him curiously, and went their way. 
He still owned a wonderful army overcoat— but 
to their eyes "failure" was written all over him. 
The visit was full of embarrassment. He cut 
it short and journeyed on to White Haven. There 
he found his wife, the mother of his two boys, as 
glad to see him as his sweetheart had ever been. 
One of the boys was a chubby youngster, nearly 
two years old, whose acquaintance he now made 
for the first time. He was named Ulysses, and 
had been born while the father was having his 
hand-to-hand struggle with the cholera on the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 97 

Isthmus of Panama. Behind the group lowered 
old Colonel Dent, outwardly civil, inwardly far 
from pleased. He could not be expected to show 
more enthusiasm than Jesse Grant had done. He 
gave his son-in-law a place under his roof; but 
the bread of dependence is never palatable. Be- 
fore spring he gave his daughter sixty or eighty 
acres of land, part of the Gravois farm, and bade 
Grant make a home for her upon it. 

It seems strange that a man who made such a 
signal success of building up the regimental fund, 
should have failed so completely in all attempts to 
do business for himself. He carried the same 
mind, the same persistence, the same honesty of 
purpose, into all his enterprises ; yet everything he 
did for the army succeeded, everything he did for 
his family and himself failed. His genius seemed 
to need the touch of war to quicken it into life. 

He had already served his country more faith- 
fully in battle, and his fellow-men more devotedly 
in sickness, traveled farther, seen more, and had 
deeper experiences of living, than fall to the lot 
of many a citizen who dies lamented at a green 
old age; yet he probably felt himself a failure. 
Undoubtedly his neighbors thought him one. At 
thirty-two, silent, unenthusiastic, with a family to 
support, he was beginning life anew, literally 
"from the ground up," on a bit of uncultivated 



98 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

land. The wildest dreamer could not foresee that 
he had almost as many more years to live, in 
which success, acclaim, and failure were to be his 
in such degree that all these episodes of his earlier 
life would sink to nothingness. 

It is almost as if he had died at this time. 
Grant the private citizen did die, for when he 
came to notice again he was a national figure, 
with the eyes of the whole country upon him. 
All this was far from the thoughts of any 
one, least of all himself, in the spring of 1855. He 
set to work upon the farm, as he had set to work 
against the cholera, meaning to win if he could. 
He had no money with which to stock the place, 
and no house to live in, but he had his two strong 
hands and his stronger determination. All sum- 
mer long he toiled in the field. Next winter he 
hewed logs for his house, and when his friends 
had come to the "raising" and put them in place, 
he called it "Hardscrabble," in cheerful admis- 
sion of the conditions of life within it. 'T worked 
very hard," Grant writes referring to this time, 
"never losing a day because of bad weather. . . . 
If nothing else could be done I would load a cord 
of wood on a wagon and take it to the city for 
sale." His dreams, when he gave himself time to 
dream, were of taking his family to live on the 
Pacific coast. In spite of all the misfortunes that 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 99 

had come upon him there, he cherished a real 
affection for it, and hoped some day to bear his 
part in its young and stirring hfc. This hope 
lasted until Congress made him a major-general. 
Meantime he was unloading wood at the back- 
doors of St. Louis homes. 

Somet'imes on these tri])s to town he encoun- 
tered old army comrades. Sherman met him, 
looking like the hard-working farmer he was, and 
concluded that West Point was not a good train- 
ing for the pursuits of civil life. Grant had no 
false pride. He was glad to see his friends, and 
it made no difference to him that he was dressed 
in overalls, with his trousers tucked into his boots. 
His classmate Coppee tells how "Grant in his 
farmer's rig, whip in hand," came to see him at 
the hotel, where was also a group of other officers. 
"If Grant had ever used spirits, as is not unlikely, 
I distinctly remember that, upon the proposal 
being made to drink. Grant said, T will go in and 
look at you, for I never drink anything.' " 

These meetings were a cheerful break in the 
monotony of his hard toil. It had its pleasant 
side, but the labor was incessant, and the returns 
very small, though he was conceded to be the most 
industrious farmer in the neighborhood. After 
four years of this his health gave way. Fever 
and ague, old enemies of his boyhood, attacked 



100 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

him, and greatly lessened the amount of work he 
could do. He decided that he must try something 
else, and in the fall of 1858 sold his crops and 
stock and farming tools at auction, and went into 
business with Harry Boggs, a real-estate agent, 
who was a cousin of Mrs. Grant. That winter he 
occupied a bare unheated room in the Boggs 
home, trudging out to Hardscrabble on Saturday 
nights to spend Sunday with his wife and their 
little flock. ^ In the spring he exchanged Hard- 
scrabble for a modest cottage in St. Louis, and 
brought his family into town. But the Boggs 
and Grant real-estate business was not large 
enough to support two families, and a silent man 
like Grant, bluntly honest and most unready of 
speech, was not the person to make it grow larger. 
In about nine months the partnership was dis- 
solved. "He did not seem just calculated for 
business," as one of the men in the office observed, 
"but an honester or more generous man never 
lived." 

The office of county engineer was about to be- 
come vacant. That was business for which he 
was entirely fitted by nature and training, while 
the salary of $1900 seemed to the impecunious ex- 

^There were now four children: Frederick, born at St. Louis, 
May, 1850; Ulysses, at Bethel, Ohio, July, 1852; Ellen, on the 
Dent farm, August, 1855; and Jesse Root, on the Dent farm, 
February, 1858. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT loi 

captain a fortune. He made application for it to 
the county commissioners in a letter that is still 
preserved in the records of the county with the 
brief official indorsement, "Rejected." It is pos- 
sible that this rejection was most fortunate for 
Grant and for the country, but at the time it was a 
bitter disappointment. A little later he secured a 
place as clerk in the St. Louis custom-house. At 
the end of a month his chief died, and when a new 
collector was appointed he found himself once 
more out of employment. Everything he touched 
seemed to go wrong. He learned that he had 
been given a bad title to the little house in St. 
Louis, and was forced to move into one even 
humbler. He walked the streets looking for 
work, and could find none to do. His wife was 
cheerful and loyal, and his babies as comforting 
in their affection as babies can be, but it was not 
agreeable to reflect that these devoted souls were 
suffering through his inability to make a proper 
living for them. He smoked his clay pipe, and 
became more silent and careworn day by day. 



VI 

HIS country's call 

GRANT'S acquaintances began to look askance 
at him, not so much because he was shabby 
and unsuccessful, as because of the opinions they 
felt, if they did not positively know, that he held. 
St. Louis was in effect a southern city. Grant 
had married into a slave-holding family. His 
friends and neighbors believed in slavery, and 
had no patience with a man who thought it wrong, 
even if he kept his thoughts to himself. 

Grant had fought in the Mexican War, which 
was brought about to help the cause of slavery, 
but he never considered that war a just one. It 
had ended in securing to the United States not 
only the large State of Texas, but the great sweep 
of country lying to the west between Texas and 
the Pacific Ocean, including California. Never- 
theless the southern Democrats had not reaped 
all the benefits they hoped from the victory. Gen- 
eral Taylor had been elected President in spite of 
them, and the new territory, instead of being 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 103 

devoted unquestioningly to slavery, had opened 
again a discussion as old as the country about the 
right and wrong of the "peculiar institution." 
Slavery had indeed been a bone of contention 
from the beginning. It seemed inconsistent, to 
say the least, that a government devoted to "life, 
liberty, and the j)ursuit of happiness" should allow 
innocent men to be held in bondage. The signers 
of the Declaration of Independence hoped it 
would die out of itself, and this might have hap- 
pened, if the discovery had not been made that 
cotton, cultivated by slaves, was an exceedingly 
profitable crop for the southern States. The half- 
awakened national conscience was lulled by greed 
of gain, and an agreement was reached as far 
back as the year 1820, called the Missouri Com- 
promise, by which all territory of the United 
States, south of 36° 30', the southern boundary of 
the State of Missouri, was to be open to slavery, 
and all north of it devoted to freedom. Missouri 
itself was to be a slave State. This had postponed 
the final settlement for many years, until prac- 
tically all the slave territory had been made into 
States, while a great amount of free territory 
still remained untouched. Then southern poli- 
ticians arranged the Mexican War, and that in 
turn started renewed discussion of the right or 
wrong of the question which all knew lay at the 



I04 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

bottom of it. Then the discovery of gold brought 
California a sudden rush of population because of 
which it clamored to be admitted as a State— and 
again the slavery question was uppermost, for old 
Mexican law dedicated California to freedom, 
while the rule of 36° 30' divided it in two. Still 
later, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, an ambitious 
and unscrupulous man, hoping to please the 
South, and by so doing to become President, man- 
aged to have the Missouri Compromise repealed, 
and the whole question was let loose once more 
upon the country. It had long ceased to be a mere 
matter of dollars, and had become one of national 
poHtics. People whose fathers had cared very 
little about it cared much, and their children cared 
more. Slavery was attacked and defended in the 
name of law, of religion, and of morals. Trials, 
persecutions, mobs, even murders, had taken place 
because of it. The southern States now proposed 
to secede and found a government of their own if 
it was not recognized as lawful in all the terri- 
tories of the United States, north as well as south. 
Day by day bitterness on the subject grew more 
intense, until personal friendships went down be- 
fore the weight of sectional hatred. 

Grant was by nature reticent. His misfortunes 
and ill luck made him even more so. He did not 
discuss the slavery question with those southern 



ULYSSES S. GRANT F05 

neighbors of his. He wished to hvc at peace with 
all men, and in that uncongenial atmosphere he 
dared not trust himself to speak of present issues, 
unless his oj)ini()n was directly asked — when he 
responded briefly, decidedly, and in a manner 
which did not add to their love for him. There 
seemed no longer a place for him in the social 
community or in the business world. 

In his Memoirs he makes no mention of these 
dark days. One sentence covers the whole period : 
*T now withdrew from the copartnership with 
Boggs, and in May, i860, removed to Galena, 
Illinois, and took a clerkship in my father's store." 
This was a leather store that the elder Grant had 
opened, putting it in charge of his two younger 
sons. Nominally Ulysses entered as a clerk at 
$50 a month, but it was understood that he was to 
have a share in the business. One of his brothers 
was slowly dying of consumption, and it was 
thought best to make no change in the manage- 
ment while he was so ill. 

Meantime, because of the illness of his brother, 
more and more responsibility fell upon the shoul- 
ders of Ulysses. He bought and sold, journeyed 
into Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa on business 
for the firm, and everywhere heard the excited 
talk about slavery, and about the threats the 
southern States were making to leave the Union. 



io6 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Interest was fully as keen as it had been among 
the Dents and their neighbors at St. Louis, but in 
these northern towns sentiment was all the other 
way — for freedom and against slavery. When 
it was known that he had served in the army he 
was plied with eager questions. Was the South in 
earnest? Was it blustering, or would it really 
fight ? And if it came to a question of blows, how 
long would the war last? Night after night he 
found himself the center of a little group, answer- 
ing the questions addressed him. He was a quiet 
man, but he could talk fluently and well on ques- 
tions that interested him. 

The weeks wore on, and political excitement 
continued daily to increase. One after the other 
the cotton States, South Carolina, Florida, Mis- 
sissippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, 
called conventions and went through the form of 
declaring themselves out of the Union. Then 
delegates from those States met at Montgomery, 
Alabama, and formed a government which they 
called the Confederate States of America, electing 
Jefferson Davis its President. Such events have 
an added interest to people who know the actors. 
Jefferson Davis had served in Mexico, and had 
been Secretary of War when Grant resigned from 
the army. He therefore knew him officially if not 
personally. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 107 

A new President was to be inaugurated at 
Washington on the coming 4th of March, a tall 
western lawyer called Lincoln, who seemed to be 
an able man, but had no previous experience in 
governing. What would he do? There were 
threats that he would not even be allowed to take 
the oath of office. It was clear that President 
Buchanan and his cabinet would do nothing at all 
so long as they remained in power. Meanwhile 
the southern States were gradually and stealthily 
getting possession of arms and ammunition. 
Grant feared that there w-ould be a fight, but he 
thought, as many more prominent people; did, that 
it would be over inside of three months. 

At last the old administration passed out of office 
and President Lincoln was inaugurated. People 
waited breathlessly to learn what his policy would 
be. In his inaugural address he explained that he 
would use the power they had given him to hold 
and occupy all forts and places belonging to the 
government, and to collect the taxes, but he would 
do nothing beyond that. If the South meant to 
have w^ar it must itself begin it. Six weeks later 
news was telegraphed over the country that the 
South had taken him at his word. Fort Sumter 
had been fired on and forced to surrender. War 
was begun. 

Instantly the discussion of right or wrong, all 



io8 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

questioning of motives, all hopes of compromising 
differences, ceased. There were but two parties, 
those who wished to defend the flag that had been 
insulted and those who hoped to defeat it. Presi- 
dent Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve 
three months, the longest period he could name 
without further authority of Congress. Business 
came to a standstill. Meetings were held in every 
town. Galena was not behind the rest. On the 
evening of April i8th the court-house was packed. 
Somebody called the meeting to order, and to 
Grant's astonishment nominated him for chair- 
man. He was sitting on one of the hard wooden 
benches, grave and quiet. Cries of "Grant! 
Grant!" brought him to his feet, and he moved 
forward toward the front of the room, a short 
man, stooping slightly, dressed in his old blue 
soldier's overcoat. Cries of "Platform, plat- 
form!" greeted him as he stopped and faced the 
gathering, but he shook his head and remained 
where he was, resting his hands upon a table. 
"With much embarrassment and some prompt- 
ing," as he says, he stated the object of the meet- 
ing. But if his tongue stammered, the words he 
uttered were clear and forceful, and others had a 
plentiful flowof oratory. Fiery speeches were made 
by the local postmaster, by a passionate young 
lawyer, John A. Rawlins, who was to become 




l-'rom a photograph owned by K. W. Gildc 
ABRAHAM LIN'COLN 



ULYSSES S. GRANT in 

Grant's trusted companion in arms, and by a 
stranger to him, Iililui B. Washburne, later his 
equally true friend in Congress. Patriotism 
glowed at white heat, and a company was raised 
and its officers elected then and there. Grant de- 
clined to be its captain, but promised to help in its 
drill and organization. The meeting broke up 
and men trooped out into the soft April night, 
suddenly sobered and grave. Now that the flow 
of oratory was over the words they remembered 
were the fateful, quiet words of this man in the 
old army coat, who talked about the duties of a 
soldier and the possibilities of the step they were 
taking, in a way that stripped their enterprise 
of all bombast and spread-eagle fury, and left 
them thoughtful, earnest, and determined. 

Grant also made his choice that night. "I 
never," he says, "went into our leather store after 
that meeting to put up a package or do other busi- 
ness." There was work for him elsewhe.re. The 
very next morning the men of the Galena com- 
pany turned out for drill. The women, no less 
patriotic, came to him to learn about the cut and 
material of the uniforms they insisted on making 
with their own hands, for this first company to 
leave their town. When it was organized and 
ready Grant went with it to Springfield and re- 
mained until it was mustered into service. It left 

7 



112 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Galena with much pomp and ceremony. Grant 
stood upon the sidewalk, carpet-bag in hand, to 
watch it pass. Then he took his way, unnoticed 
and unaccompanied, to the train. A small boy, 
running after the soldiers, recalls that the carpet- 
bag was very thin. 

When he was about to go back to Galena the 
Governor of Illinois asked him to go into the 
Adjutant-General's office and give such help as 
he could. A man of his experience was indeed a 
boon at a time when patriotic impulse was only 
excelled by ignorance of what ought to be done, 
and how to do it. Grant was no clerk. He was 
never sure of finding a paper he put away, unless 
he put it in his own coat pocket, or in the hands of 
some one more methodical than himself; but he 
was familiar with the routine of army life, and 
could direct how official forms and papers should 
be made out. 

People took little heed of him sitting at his desk 
in a corner of the Adjutant-General's office. One, 
with a superabundance of curiosity, asked who he 
might be. "Oh, a dead-beat military man, a dis- 
charged officer of the regular army," was the an- 
swer. But the "dead-beat military man" had a 
way of knowing things that others needed to 
know in those days, and of answering questions 
with a patient clearness that made his answers 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 113 

doubly valuable. Tjcfore they realized it the whole 
office force was turning- to him for information 
and advice. Then Governor Yates made him 
"mustering officer and aide" at a salary of $3 per 
day— and was roundly criticized for his extrav- 
agance. 

While on this duty Grant spent a few days at 
St. Louis. The town seethed with disloyalty. 
The Governor of Missouri, feigning devotion to 
the Union, had brought troops together to cap- 
ture the arsenal, and a rebel flag already flaunted 
from a house on Pine Street. During Grant's 
visit Captain Nathaniel Lyon, an old acquain- 
tance of his at West Point, quietly closed in on the 
Governor's troops with a small force of his own, 
and took them all prisoners. At the same time 
the rebel flag was ordered to be pulled down. 
Grant happened to be passing the house in a Pine 
Street car at the moment. A young man entered, 
boiling with rage. Not realizing that any one 
present could have a contrary opinion, he turned 
to Grant and vented his wrath. "Things have 

come to a pretty pass," he said, when a free 

people could not choose their own flag. Where 
he came from, if a man dared to say a word in 
favor of the Union, he was hanged to a limb of the 
nearest tree. Grant, c^uietly ignoring the contra- 
diction of these two statements, answered that 



114 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

after all the citizens of St. Louis were not as 
intolerant as they might be. "I have not seen a 
single rebel hung yet," he said, "nor heard of one, 
but there are plenty who ought to be !" The young 
man withered under the level glance that accom- 
panied these words, and for the time being at least 
nothing more was heard of his disunion senti- 
ments. 

At the beginning of the Civil War the regular 
army, though larger than at the time of the war 
with Mexico, numbered only 17,113 men. A 
large proportion of its officers went south and cast 
their fortunes with the rebellion, so that the num- 
ber was still further diminished. Within three 
weeks from the firing on Fort Sumter the Presi- 
dent issued two calls for volunteers, amounting 
altogether to about 150,000. Men of Grant's 
training were needed to leaven this great mass of 
good but raw material. He had refused the cap- 
taincy of the Galena company for the reason that 
he felt his experience fitted him for more im- 
portant duties. 

His work at Springfield being nearly finished, 
he wrote on May 24, 1861, to the Adjutant-Gen- 
eral at Washington : 

Sir : Having served for fifteen years in the regular 
army, including four years at West Point, and feeling 
it the duty of every one who has been educated at the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 115 

Government expense to offer their services for the sup- 
port of that Government, I have the honor, very 
respectfully, to tender my services, until the close of 
the war, in such capacity as may be offered. I would 
say that, in view of my present age and length of ser- 
vice, I feel myself competent to command a regiment, 
if the President, in his judgment, should see fit to in- 
trust one to me. 

A humble estimate, truly, in view of after 
events, yet he had "some hesitation in suggesting 
a rank as high as the colonelcy of a regiment," 
doubting if he were equal to the position. After 
seeing nearly every colonel mustered into the 
army from the State of Illinois, however, and a 
few from Indiana, he concluded that if they could 
command regiments properly, he could. 

No notice was taken of this letter, though there 
was need of trained men in every branch of the 
service. There was an immense rush and pressure 
of work at the Washington office, resulting in 
neglect and confusion. Years after the war was 
over the letter was found in an out-of-the-way 
place. It had not even been pigeon-holed. 

Matters dragged on until the middle of June. 
Grant was very much discouraged. Nobody 
seemed to want him. He went to visit his parents 
at Covington, Kentucky, just across the river 
from Cincinnati, not so much for the pleasure of 



ii6 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

seeing them, as in the hope that Georg-e B. Mc- 
Clelian, who had been one of his acquaintances at 
West Point and in Mexico, and was now major- 
general of volunteers, with headquarters at Cin- 
cinnati, might recall old days and oifer him a 
place on his staff. He crossed the river and called 
upon him on two successive days ; then that dream 
faded away. The busy major-general would 
not receive him. 

While he was absent on this fruitless quest 
Governor Yates offered him command of the 
Twenty-first Illinois, a volunteer regiment then 
in a state of mutiny against its colonel, a young 
man who had been elected for his handsome pres- 
ence, but whose actions turned out to be as unsol- 
dierly as drink and vanity could make them. 
Grant accepted, hastened to Springfield, appeared 
at the State Fair grounds where the regiment was 
camped, and with a bandanna handkerchief tied 
outside his sack-coat for a sash, and a stick for a 
sword, took them in charge. He was not an im- 
pressive figure, and the regiment was inclined to 
murmur. "What do they mean by sending down 
a little man like that to command this regiment?" 
one indignant private asked. "Who is he, any- 
how?" "Let me tell you something," said a 
sergeant. "I stood close enough to see his eye and 
the set of his jaw. I '11 tell you who he is : he 's 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 117 

the colonel of this regiment" — and so they found 
him. He had hard work for a few days, but most 
of the men favored order, and a little regular 
army punishment, meted out to the leaders of 
trouble, brought them into good discipline. On the 
second morning nearly a score of them were tied 
up for drunkenness, leaving camp without orders, 
and various other crimes, among them a danger- 
ous man called Mexico, who cursed his new colo- 
nel, and swore that for every minute he stayed 
there he would have an ounce of his blood. 

"Gag that man," said Grant quietly. 

One by one the others were released by the offi- 
cers of the guard, but Grant himself released 
Mexico, who made not the slightest effort to carry 
out his threat. 

The new colonel had demonstrated his ability to 
command, but one thing the regiment had not yet 
heard him do— make a speech. Their former 
colonel was always making speeches. Before long 
they found out that his were brief and to the point. 
Two eloquent congressmen came to town and 
were introduced to Grant wnth the request that 
they be allowed to address his men. The men 
were assembled, and heard them discourse at fiery 
length on patriotism and the privilege of fighting 
for their country. At the end there were cries of 
"Grant, Grant! a speech!" He advanced a step 



ii8 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

or two toward them. All was silence. The con- 
gressmen, as well as the regiment, were curious to 
hear what he would say. His speech was just five 
words long: 

''Men, go to your quarters." That was all. 

Shortly afterward orders came for the regi- 
ment to go to Quincy, preparatory to being sent to 
northern Missouri. An agent of a railroad com- 
pany came to see about his transportation. 

"How many passenger and how many freight 
cars do you want?" he asked. "I do not want 
any," Grant answered bluntly and without ex- 
planation. The agent felt insulted, and reported 
as much to the Adjutant-General who had sent 
him. The latter hurried out to the camp and in- 
quired indignantly why his orders were disobeyed. 

"How much time have I in which to get to 
Quincy?" Grant asked undisturbed. 

"I do not remember." 

Grant drew a paper from his pocket. "My or- 
ders," he said, "give me ten days. What must I 
do when I get there ?" 

"Go to northern Missouri, I suppose," the Ad- 
jutant replied. 

"Is there a railroad there from Quincy?" 

"I believe not." 

"Shall I wait there until one is built?" 

The Adjutant began to think that he was deal- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 119 

ing with a madman. Then Grant explained. "As 
there is no railroad to northern Missouri, and as 
I cannot wait to have one built, it is very clear that 
I shall have to march. Now, as it is generally 
understood that my regiment is in bad discipline, 
and as I have ten days' time, I have made up my 
mind that I will begin in earnest, right at once, by 
marching my men from here to Quincy. That is 
the reason for my answer. I do not want any 
railroad cars, but I do want equipment for a 
march." 

This practical soldiering created something of a 
sensation. Grant got his wagons, personally 
superintended loading them with salt pork and 
regular army rations, and led his men out of 
Springfield on foot, making about five miles the 
first day. Orders were issued that the regiment 
would move at six o'clock next morning. Six 
o'clock came ; many of the men were not only not 
ready, but were still asleep. It was seven before 
he got them under way. That night he issued 
another order to the effect that they would march 
at six o'clock on the following day, ready or not 
ready. The time came and the colonel formed his 
column and started, regardless of men who were 
breakfastless, or shoeless, or only half dressed. 
They were forced into the ranks just as they hap- 
pened to be when the hour struck, the ones who 



I20 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

were barefoot being forbidden to take their shoes 
with them. After going a mile or two the column 
was halted and the missing footgear sent for. 
Next morning the tap of the drum found every 
man ready to fall in. 

The destination of the regiment was changed 
several times. It was ordered here and there in 
eastern Missouri to protect towns against bands 
of bushwhackers, but it saw no real fighting until 
somewhat later. There were moments, however, 
when battle seemed very near. Grant has de- 
scribed his feelings at such a crisis. "My sensa- 
tions as we approached what I supposed might be 
a field of battle were anything but agreeable. I 
had been in all the engagements in Mexico that it 
was possible for one person to be in, but not in 
command. If some one else had been colonel, and 
I had been lieutenant-colonel, I do not think I 
would have felt any trepidation. ... As we ap- 
proached the brow of the hill from which it was 
expected we could see Harris's camp, and possibly 
find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart 
kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me 
as though it was in my throat. I would have 
given anything then to have been back in Illinois, 
but I had not the moral courage to halt and con- 
sider what to do. I kept right on. When we 
reached a point from which the valley below was 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 121 

in full view, I halted. The place where Harris 
had heen encamped a few days hefore was still 
there, and the marks of a recent encampment were 
plainly visible, Init the troops were gone. My 
heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once 
that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I 
had been of him. This was a view of the question 
I had never taken before, but it was one I never 
forgot afterwards. From that event to the close 
of the war I never experienced trepidation upon 
confronting an enemy, though I always felt more 
or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as 
much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The 
lesson was valuable." 

Grant and his men were all learning. Here 
is another frank confession about those first days 
of the Civil War. "Up to this time my regiment 
had not been carried in the school of the soldier 
beyond the company drill, except that it had re- 
ceived some training on the march from Spring- 
field to the Illinois river. There was now a good 
opportunity of exercising it in the battalion drill. 
While I was at West Point the tactics used in the 
army had been Scott's and the musket the flint- 
lock. I had never looked at a copy of tactics from 
the time of my graduation. My standing in that 
branch of studies had been near the foot of the 
class. In the Mexican War in the summer of 



122 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

1846 I had been appointed regimental quarter- 
master and commissary, and had not been at a 
battahon drill since. The arms had been changed 
since then, and Hardee's tactics had been adopted. 
I got a copy of tactics and studied one lesson, in- 
tending to confine the exercise of the first day to 
the commands I had thus learned. By pursuing 
this course from day to day I thought I would 
soon get through the volume. We were encamped 
just outside of town on the common, among scat- 
tering suburban houses with enclosed gardens, 
and when I got my regiment in line and rode to 
the front I soon saw that if I attempted to follow 
the lesson I had studied I would have to clear 
away some of the houses and garden fences to 
make room. I perceived . . . however that Har- 
dee's tactics . . . was nothing more than com- 
mon sense and the progress of the age applied to 
Scott's system. ... I found no trouble in giving 
commands that would take my regiment where I 
wanted it to go, and carry it around all obstacles. 
I do not believe that the officers of the regiment 
ever discovered that I had never studied the 
tactics that I used." 

There is just one exception to be taken to these 
statements, and that is that it was not lack of 
"moral courage" which led Grant up the hill with 
his heart in his throat. The result at any rate is 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 123 

precisely the same as if he went quakinjr, hut 
determined to do or die. We are at liberty to [)nt 
our own construction upon his acts. His self- 
control of feature and action, his prompt, unex- 
cited doin<T of the next thing that presented itself, 
taking advantage of any chance that offered, 
without showing that he was disturbed or turned 
from his original plan, were all useful to him, and 
undoubtedly had their part in his success — but 
lack of moral courage is not the proper name 
for his state of mind. 



VII 

FAME AND SLANDER 

GRANT was in debt when he assumed com- 
mand of the Twenty-first IlHnois Volunteers. 
He had not yet paid all that he owed in St. Louis. 
For reasons best known to himself he chose to 
apply to outsiders rather than to his father for 
the three hundred dollars necessary to purchase 
his horse and uniform. A. A. Collins, an old 
friend and business partner of Jesse Grant's, in- 
dorsed his note for that amount, and he went 
away to the war that he thought would be over in 
ninety days. 

Instead of being over in three months it lasted 
four years— sixteen times three months— and 
developed into one of the greatest struggles of 
modern times. The ground the troops fought 
over was larger than England, Scotland, Ireland, 
France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal combined. 
The losses in men amounted to seven hundred 
lives a day; the cost in money to more than 
$2,000,000 every twenty-four hours. It is of 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 125 

course impossible in a book Hke this to give a bis- 
tory or even an oiitHne of sticli a tremendous war. 
Merely to name tbe principal battles vi^ould be out 
of the question. All we can hope to do is to men- 
tion the more important engagements in which 
Grant figured, and to show the part he took in 
bringing the war to a close. 

In a general way there were three fields of 
operations. The first, lying between Washington, 
the capital of the nation, and Richmond, the capi- 
tal of the Confederacy, with the Alleghany 
Mountains to the west, and Chesapeake Bay to 
the east, was the smallest in point of size, but the 
greatest in point of interest. Each side wished to 
capture the capital city of the other, and the ter- 
ritory between them became the principal fighting 
ground of the war. A second and larger field 
lay between the Alleghany Mountains and the 
Mississippi river. A third, largest of all, 
stretched from the Mississippi westward to the 
Rocky Mountains, and south to the Rio Grande; 
but wnth this last we have nothing to do. The 
central field was the one in which Grant won the 
victories that brought him fame. In the smaller 
one, between Washington and Richmond, he van- 
quished Lee and fought the war to a close. 

At first his duties were comparatively unim- 
portant. The State of Missouri, though full of 



126 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

rebel sentiment, had not joined the Confederacy, 
and the earhest efforts of Union commanders in 
the West were directed to keeping it from follow- 
ing the example of Tennessee, North Carolina, 
and Arkansas, which had cast their lot with the 
rebellious cotton States. Grant was sent to guard 
a railroad station on the Northern Missouri Rail- 
road, then to protect Ironton, an important rail- 
road town in southeastern Missouri; from there 
to inspection duty at Jefferson City, then to com- 
mand the military Department of Southeast Mis- 
souri; and finally was placed in command of the 
great military depot that had been established at 
Cairo, at the southernmost point of the State of 
Illinois, where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers 
come together. 

This gradual enlarging of his duties was in no 
way the result of chance. He demonstrated his 
fitness for every increase of power confided to 
him. His reports were clear and brief, and they 
always told of something done. If supplies were 
imperfect he did not complain and ask to have 
them remedied. He found the best substitute he 
could. If he was not able to execute all of an 
order, he went as far toward it as possible. He 
always had a positive opinion, and that opinion 
was usually found to be correct. It had taken 
him two months to get his commission. On 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 127 

August 7th, less than two months after that, he 
was made brigadier-general of volunteers— to his 
great surprise, for "he did not know he had done 
anything to inspire such confidence." 

He gained nothing in military splendor by his 
increase in rank. He arrived at headquarters in 
Cairo on September 4th, quite unheralded, in 
citizen's dress, his brigadier-general's uniform 
not having yet reached him. Colonel Oglesby, 
who had been in command, was surrounded by 
people, some asking favors, others making com- 
plaints. He did not catch Grant's name, and 
thought him some refugee who wished to be sent 
north. His astonishment can be imagined when 
this small man in a rusty coat calmly seated him- 
self at Oglesby's own table and began writing 
orders. He looked for a moment as though he 
would like to have some one identify the stranger, 
but he surrendered the office without a question. 

The new commander had been in Cairo just one 
day when he heard that a Confederate force was 
headed toward Paducah, Kentucky, an important 
point at the junction of the Ohio and Tennessee 
rivers. He telegraphed to his superior officer, 
General Fremont, asking permission to seize the 
town. No answer being forthcoming, he inter- 
preted silence to mean consent, and occupied it 
some six hours ahead of the enemy, to the quite 



128 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

unnecessary consternation of its inhabitants, who 
were expecting to welcome the other army. This 
prompt action contributed not a little toward 
keeping that section of the country firmly in the 
Union. 

It was from Cairo that Grant led his first ex- 
pedition that resulted in field fighting. This took 
place on November 7th. General Fremont had 
ordered him to keep the Confederate General 
Polk, then at Columbus, Kentucky, from sending 
reinforcements to Missouri. With 3000 men on 
transports he started down the river toward 
Columbus, not to fight, but to make a show of 
force. On the way he heard of a rebel camp at 
Belmont Landing on the Missouri shore opposite 
Columbus, and determined to break it up. Before 
he reached it it had been heavily reinforced. The 
fight lasted four hours, the Confederates bravely 
contesting the ground, but Grant's soldiers beat- 
ing them back until the camp fell into their hands, 
and their antagonists took refuge in confusion 
under the steep river-bank. His raw troops did 
not realize that the batteries across the river at 
Columbus might open upon them at any moment, 
and that, having accomplished their purpose, it 
was high time to retire. They thought they had 
won a great victory, and gave themselves over to 
an insane carnival of joy, shouting, running 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 129 

abput shaking hands, and pillaging the rebel 
camp, while some of the officers, quite as mad, 
fell to making political speeches to any who would 
listen. Grant tried in vain to stop all this. He 
saw lines of men forming on the opposite bank, 
and transports swinging out into the stream. 
Knowing that something must be done at once he 
gave orders to fire the rebel tents. 

This, with the grape-shot that suddenly began 
to fall among them, brought the Union soldiers to 
their senses ; but General Polk had had time to get 
reinforcements across the river, and they found 
the way to the boats barred. 

"My God," some one cried, "we are sur- 
rounded!" 

"We cut our way in, we can cut our way out," 
was Grant's unexcited reply, and officers and men, 
inspired by this to them entirely new idea, formed 
in passable order, and fought their way to the 
transports. Grant, lingering to search for a rear- 
guard that had already gone on board, found him- 
self quite alone within fifty yards of a troop of 
Confederate soldiers. He turned his horse to- 
ward the river and started back, first at an in- 
dolent walk, then, when he thought he was out of 
sight, as fast as the good beast could carry him. 
The boats were already putting ofif. His general's 
uniform was covered by a sort of raincoat, and 



I30 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

his own men did not recognize him. The horse 
seemed to take in the situation. Putting its fore- 
feet over the almost perpendicular bank, it slid 
down on its haunches and trotted on board over a 
single plank hurriedly thrust out to meet it. 

The battle of Belmont was claimed by the South 
as "one victory at least over General Grant," but 
as they accomplished what they went to do, and 
got away safely, Grant's soldiers thought other- 
wise. The little affair of "cutting their way out," 
in their first engagement, gave them a confidence 
which lasted throughout the war. 

Between November 7th, when the battle of 
Belmont was fought, and the following February, 
Grant was able to do little beyond drill his soldiers 
and prepare for some future movement. General 
Fremont, who was not too energetic, was fol- 
lowed in command in the West by General Hal- 
leck, a man of much military learning but of 
extreme caution, who wished to make war by rule 
and book, instead of by taking swift advantage of 
opportunities that lay at hand. One such oppor- 
tunity Grant and others felt to be in danger of 
slipping from their grasp. Near the border-line 
between Kentucky and Tennessee lay two forts, 
Henry and Donelson, one on the Tennessee river, 
the other on the Cumberland, which at this point 
flow side by side only eleven or twelve miles 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 131 

apart. If Fort Henry should be taken Union 
gunboats could go up the Tennessee river as far 
as Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and a railroad of 
great importance to the Confederacy would be 
rendered useless. If Donelson should fall there 
would be nothing to prevent Union troops from 
ascending the Cumberland river as far as Nash- 
ville, taking the city, and threatening a large ex- 
tent of rich country eastward in Kentucky. The 
capture of both strongholds together would force 
the Confederate frontier southward a long dis- 
tance. Grant felt that it was perfectly possible to 
move his troops from Cairo by water along the 
Ohio river to its junction with the Tennessee, and 
up the Tennessee to within striking distance of 
Fort Henry ; and he was impatient to do this be- 
fore the Confederates fortified the place more 
strongly. 

So anxious was he that he asked permission to 
go to St. Louis to explain his plan to the com- 
manding general. It was granted, rather un- 
graciously, but he got no further than the open- 
ing sentences before General Halleck cut him 
short with the contemptuous declaration that such 
an expedition would require 6o,(XX) men. He re- 
turned to Cairo, having got little satisfaction out 
of his trip beyond a sight of his old friends in and 
near St. Louis. Being only human this was a 



132 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

satisfaction, for he was no longer the downcast, 
almost outcast, man of a year ago. His command 
was an important one, his reputation was grow- 
ing, he was beginning to pay his debts, and his 
acquaintances and family, delighted and frankly 
astonished, once more took an interest in him. 

He was too much in earnest about Fort Henry 
to let even Halleck's rebuff dissuade him. Com- 
modore Foote, who had charge of the gunboats 
that must help in such an expedition, was as 
strongly in favor of it as he. Together they made 
another request, and this time Halleck gave his 
consent. They needed no second invitation. On 
February ist they received their permission. On 
the 2d they started. On the 6th, despite bad 
weather and worse roads. Grant telegraphed 
"Fort Henry is ours," adding with a businesslike 
energy very unlike the methods common in Hal- 
leck's department, 'T shall take and destroy Fort 
Donelson on the 8th." 

He had no authority to take Fort Donelson, but 
it was manifestly the next thing to do. He prob- 
ably would have kept within the letter of his 
promise had not the weather, which had been bad 
from the beginning, grown so much worse that 
it was impossible to move the troops rapidly, even 
over the short distance that lay between the two 
forts. The roads were veritable seas of mud. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT i^.^ 

Horses could not go faster tlian a walk. Artillery 
and wagon-trains could not move at all. It was the 
1 2th before he was able to start his men on the 
march, the 14th before the attack could be begun. 
In the meantime the Confederates had been re- 
inforced and their strength increased from 6000 
to something more than 15,000, the number of 
Grant's attacking column. Then it suddenly grew 
very cold, and another storm of rain, snow, sleet, 
and piercing wind caused the troops, exposed to 
it without shelter, and many of them quite new to 
the hardships of an active campaign, to sufifer 
greatly. Even camp-fires had to be forbidden 
them except in places out of sight of the enemy. 
On the 14th Foote and his gunboats came up and 
joined in firing upon the forts until two of them 
were seriously disabled, when all of them with- 
drew for repairs. This gave the beleaguered gar- 
rison new confidence, and they telegraphed to 
Richmond news of a great victory. 

Commodore Foote had been wounded. Next 
morning Grant visited him upon his flagship, and 
on his return was met by an aide, white with ex- 
citement, who told him that the enemy had come 
out from the fort in numbers superior to his own, 
and were pressing his men hard. He spurred away 
from the aide, leaving him with his message half 
told, and galloped upon the scene of action, his 



134 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

great "claybank" horse splashing yellow mud in 
every direction. He found most of his lines in 
good order, but at one point there was danger — 
even of a rout. He heard a discouraged private 
say, "They have come out to fight all day; their 
knapsacks are full of grub." 

"Is that so?" he asked quickly; "bring me one." 
He opened several in succession. There were 
three days' provisions in each. His trained eye 
read an entirely different meaning in this. "Men 
defending a fort do not carry full knapsacks," he 
said. "They are trying to force a way out. Who- 
ever strikes first will win," and he sent a hurried 
note to Foote asking him to make a show with his 
gunboats, even if they were not able to go into 
action. His aide rode by his side, calling out to 
the troops as they passed: "Fill your cartridge 
boxes quickly and get into line. The enemy is 
trying to escape!" and the men, who were at a 
point where a ringing command would restore 
their confidence, or a moment of hesitation com- 
plete their discomfiture, responded with a will. 
By night they had regained all they had lost, and 
the Confederates were once more shut up in the 
fort. 

Before morning a queer scene was enacted 
within its walls. There were three commanders 
present. General Floyd, the senior, had been a 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 135 

traitorous member of President Buchanan's cabi- 
net, and feared for his life if he were captured. 
Accordingly he turned over his command to Gen- 
eral Pillow. The latter, who objected equally to 
falling into Union hands, in turn transferred his 
power to the junior general, Simon B. Buckner, 
and the two seniors escaped by boat before day- 
light with about 3000 men. Next morning, just as 
the Union troops were preparing for a final as- 
sault, Grant received a note from General Buck- 
ner, suggesting the appointment of commissioners 
to arrange terms of capitulation. The language 
of Grant's answer fittingly crowned his victory. 
"No terms except an unconditional and immediate 
surrender can be accepted," he wrote. 'T propose 
to move immediately upon your works." 

Buckner protested against these "unchivalric" 
terms, but yielded because he must. That day 
Grant was able to telegraph to Halleck, ''We have 
taken Fort Donelson and from 12,000 to 15,000 
prisoners, including Generals Buckner and Bush- 
rod R. Johnson ; also about 20,000 stands of arms, 
48 pieces of artillery, 17 heavy guns, from 2000 to 
4000 horses, and large quantities of commissary 
stores." This was the greatest victory that had 
fallen to the Union arms since the beginning of 
the war. Grant became instantly a national fig- 
ure. President Lincoln nominated him major- 



136 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 






r--Mxi ^.*«^ .w^- 

REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" DESPATCH 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 137 

general of volunteers, and the Senate confirmed 
the appointment at once; but the j)roudest title, 
and tlic one most quickly bestowed, was the one 
g-iven him by the people of the North. Seizing 
with (lelii^ht upon the telling phrase in his answer 
to Ruckner, they fitted it to the initials of his 
name, and from that time onward he was "Uncon- 
ditional Surrender Grant." 

Buckner found his victor anything but "un- 
chivalric." One of the younger officers hoped 
that Grant would insist on lowered flags, and all 
the picturesque display of a surrender when the 
Confederates marched out of Donelson. "Why 
humiliate a brave enemy?" Grant asked sharply. 
He and Buckner had spent three years together at 
West Point. Afterward they had served together 
in the army, and it was Buckner who had helped 
Grant when he found himself penniless and alone 
in New York after his resignation. Their meet- 
ing under these changed conditions was cordial, 
almost aflfectionate. Finding that Buckner was 
in need of funds Grant drew him away from the 
other officers into a dark corner, and there in the 
friendly shadow made shift to offer him his purse 
—modestly, awkwardly, as if afraid the light 
would witness his act of generosity. T.ike men 
and Americans they hid their emotion under a 
show of banter. Buckner told Grant that if he 



138 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

had been in command of Donelson the Union 
troops would not have reached the fort so easily, 
to which Grant, who had little respect for Floyd 
and Pillow, answered that if Buckner had been in 
command he would never have attempted to ap- 
proach in the way he did. The jesting had more 
than a grain of truth in it. Most of the com- 
manders on the Confederate side, as well as on his 
own, had served in the old army and were per- 
sonally known to Grant. The knowledge that he 
thus possessed of their characters and habits of 
mind was of inestimable advantage to him, and 
was never lost sight of when he faced them in 
battle. 

A great discussion arose as to who had first 
thought of attacking Forts Henry and Donelson 
by way of the rivers. Halleck's friends claimed the 
credit for him ; others let it be inferred that they 
were responsible. Grant was disgusted. ''It is 
little to talk about it being the great wisdom of 
any general," he wrote to his friend Washburne. 
"General Halleck no doubt thought of this route 
long ago, and I am sure I did." 

Donelson having fallen, it seemed to Grant that 
the way was open for large advances into the 
South, if the Union armies could work together. 
He sent word to General Halleck that he would 
push on to Nashville unless he received orders to 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 139 

the contrary. But there were several division 
commanders, each bent on carrying out his own 
plans. Misunderstandings arose, due partly to a 
disloyal telegraph operator, who withheld mes- 
sages addressed to Grant, w^hich made Halleck 
think that he was disobeying him, and partly to 
the army contractors who disliked Grant's open 
and honest way of doing business. Utterly uncon- 
scious of this sentiment against him, Grant went 
on doing what he believed to be his duty, until a 
curt telegram from General Halleck dated March 
4th directed him to turn over his command to 
General C. F. Smith, and to remain at Fort 
Henry. Thus, within three wrecks of his victory 
at Fort Donelson he found himself suddenly in 
disgrace and practically under arrest. There was 
nothing to do, of course, but to obey. After ten 
days Halleck, convinced of his hasty action, re- 
stored him to command, but the injustice hurt 
him deeply, and he asked to be relieved. Halleck 
refused, answering: "Instead of relieving you, I 
wish you, as soon as your new army is in the field, 
to assume the immediate command and lead it on 
to new victories." It is to the credit of both gen- 
erals that they dropped the quarrel where it was 
and worked together for the good of the service. 
But Grant's next battle came near not being a 
victory. On March 17th, when he again took 



I40 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

command, he found bis men cam.ped on both sides 
of the Tennessee river— at Pittsburg Landing 
and at Savannah, a hamlet on the opposite shore 
nine miles further down-stream. He got them 
together at Pittsburg Landing, but kept his own 
headquarters at Savannah, and in spite of the fact 
that the enemy was known to be gathering in 
force at Corinth, Mississippi, only twenty miles 
away, took no steps toward having his camp in- 
trenched or in any way strengthened. Lack of 
experience is the only explanation of this. Later 
in the war the armies on both sides became so skil- 
ful with pick and shovel that every camp was 
turned into an earthwork almost as soon as the 
tents were in place. Li April, 1862, they had not 
yet learned the value of this. 

General Buell with his army had been ordered 
to join Grant from Kentucky. For two weeks the 
troops lay waiting for him at Pittsburg Landing 
in fancied security; then on the mornmg of April 
6th they were set upon and completely surprised 
by General Albert Sidney Johnston, one of the 
most brilliant of the southern leaders. Grant was 
at Savannah, suffering from a severely bruised 
ankle, which had been crushed by the fall of his 
horse. Hearing the sound of battle, he ordered 
steam up on his launch, sent his horses aboard, 
and started with his staff. The roaring of cannon 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 141 

.grew louder and more threatening as the nine 
slow miles of river slipped behind them. The staff 
listened and speculated. Grant sat silent, an un- 
lighted cigar in his hand, and a strange, stern look 
gathering on his face, his battle-look that they 
soon came to know. Before the boat touched the 
shore he had hobbled to his horse. With an effort 
he swung himself into the saddle. Once there all 
pain seemed to leave him, and before the gang- 
plank was fairly down he had leaped ashore and 
was heading at reckless speed for the heaviest 
firing. All day he rode from place to place, in- 
tense, vigilant, strangely quiet; directing, en- 
couraging, re-forming stragglers, ordering up 
reserves, doing all a commander could do; expos- 
ing himself with criminal carelessness to the 
enemy's fire— and in spite of all his efforts seeing 
his men driven slowly back by the Confederates. 
General Buell arrived at length, ahead of his 
troops. He asked Grant what preparations had 
been made for defeat. The resolute look deep- 
ened on Grant's face. 

"I have not despaired of whipping them yet," 
he said. 

"Does not the prospect begin to look gloomy?" 
some one asked. 

"Not at all. They can't force our lines around 
these batteries to-night; it is too late. Delay 



142 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

counts everything with us. To-morrow we shall 
attack with fresh troops and drive them of 
course." 

One of Grant's frankest critics reports this con- 
versation, and adds : "From it I date, in my own 
case at least, the beginning of any belief in 
Grant's greatness." 

So, although when night fell the Union lines 
had been forced back a full mile and a half, and a 
horde of stragglers cowered by the river. Grant 
felt that to-morrow he would drive the enemy "of 
course"; and his faith communicated itself in 
some mysterious way to the tired and battered 
soldiers who lay down with their guns in the rain 
to wait for to-morrow's dawn. 

Grant too, after visiting every division com- 
mander, lay down to sleep upon the ground, his 
head against a tree. Toward daylight he sought 
refuge from the downpour on the porch of a little 
hut, but the place was full of wounded soldiers, 
and their groans and suffering drove him back 
again to the insufficient shelter of his tree. 

By morning Buell's men had come up. The 
enemy were disheartened by the death of their 
brilliant commander Johnston, shot at the head of 
his men during a charge on the previous after- 
noon. They fought gallantly and long under his 
successor Beauregard, but in their turn gave way, 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 145 

and by night tlie battle was over— a Union victory 
dyed deep with the blood of the South and the 
North ; so deep that thereafter no one dared ques- 
tion which was the braver side. 

Grant had been woefully negligent in failing to 
take precautions against surprise, but he made the 
best amends he could. He fought the battle as 
only a great commander fights, and his powers of 
mind and body seemed to grow with the need. 

The battle of Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh, as 
it was also called from a church around which the 
fighting raged, was indeed a victory, but it filled 
the land with mourning. It had been bought at a 
tremendous sacrifice of lives and men— 13,047 on 
the Union side, 10,699 or more on the Confederate 
— losses beside which the figures of the Mexican 
War fade to insignificance.^ Papers printed long 
lists of dead and wounded. People suddenly 
awoke to the grim and dreadful nature of war, 
and to the fact that this war would be long as well 
as bitter. Even Grant, up to that time, had 
thought it a question of months, not years. From 
that point he changed his methods. He was as 
careful as ever of the lives of non-combatants, but 
he no longer protected rebel property that could 
benefit the enemy, 

'The number of American soldiers killed and wounded in the 
war with Mexico was less than 5000. 



146 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

For the battle of Shiloh he was acclaimed a 
great victor ; but he was also the center of great 
abuse, and more than one general, intentionally or 
unintentionally, fostered the impression that the 
honor of victory belonged rightfully to him. 
President Lincoln, beset on all sides for Grant's 
removal, listened patiently, but shook his head. 
"No," he said, thinking of the wearying list of 
generals, east and west, who promised, com- 
plained, and importuned, but rarely came to the 
point of winning victories. "No. I can't spare 
Grant. He fights." 

General Halleck, one of the men the President 
may have had in mind, came soon after the battle 
of Shiloh to take the field in person. He made 
Grant second in command, but with the chief on 
the ground there was nothing for him to do, and 
he was again under a sort of honorable arrest. 
The position grew so irksome that he asked sev- 
eral times to be relieved, but this was not granted, 
and he had to stand by in frantic idleness day by 
day while the learned and gifted Halleck bur- 
rowed his way like a mole toward Corinth, 
whither Beauregard had retired. There had been 
lack of intrenching at Pittsburg Landing; now 
there was altogether too much. It had taken the 
Confederates two days to cover the distance when 
they came to attack the Union army. Halleck, 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 147 

who had three armies under his hand, Grant's and 
Buell's, and General Pope's, which had joined 
him since the battle, employed his 100,000 men, 
twice the number Beauregard had, thirty-seven 
days, doing everything with scientific precision — 
to find at the end of it all an empty town, guarded 
by ferocious-looking logs of wood, mounted on 
wagon-wheels and pointed toward the advancing 
host. The Confederates had left these "Quaker 
guns" on guard, and withdrawn, taking all their 
artillery and military stores to other fields of use- 
fulness. 

Halleck hid his mortification under a shower of 
telegrams and words. The army laughed un- 
pleasantly, and had its own opinion of theoretical 
soldiering. The country, not being in possession 
of all the facts, accepted Halleck's statements at 
their face value, and rejoiced in a bloodless vic- 
tory. Even so, the fall of Corinth was a matter 
of no little moment, since it forced the Confeder- 
ates to abandon certain important points on the 
Mississippi river, notably Fort Pillow and Mem- 
phis, which latter city surrendered after a naval 
battle on the 6th of June. But to Grant, who felt 
that all this could have been accomplished in two 
days of active campaigning, and who now saw his 
chief settling down to dig elaborately useless for- 
tifications around Corinth, instead of sending his 



148 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

large available force on a mission of destruction 
against some vital point, the situation was unen- 
durable. He asked for thirty days' leave of 
absence. General Sherman, always his stanch 
friend and admirer, heard casually that he was 
going away, and hurried to find out if it were 
true. He found Grant seated among his camp 
belongings, already packed to start. When 
pressed for a reason Grant looked at him with 
eyes full of dumb sufifering and answered, "Sher- 
man, you know. ... I have stood it as long as I 
can, and can endure it no longer." But Sherman, 
with friendly tact and wise foresight, persuaded 
his friend to remain, assuring him that he would 
find no peace away from the army in the field, and 
that "if he went away events would go right 
along, and he would be left out, whereas, if he 
remained, some happy accident might restore him 
to favor and his true place." 

The happy accident was long in coming. The 
three armies brought together for Halleck's 
bloodless capture of Corinth were once more 
divided and sent on different errands. In July 
Halleck was called to Washington and made 
general-in-chief, so that McClellan might devote 
all his energies to capturing Richmond. This left 
Grant in Halleck's place, since nobody was sent to 
succeed him, but he was not formally assigned to 
it until October, and meantime felt much uncer- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 149 

tainty as to what was expected of him. Whatever 
may have been expected, his tro()i)s had been so 
scattered by the orders of General Hallcck that he 
could do little beyond holding himself on the 
defensive in a territory decidedly hostile. Alto- 
gether it was a perplexing and trying summer. 
There were many annoyances connected with, yet 
quite distinct from, his military duties. Cotton 
speculators drove him mad with requests for un- 
lawful help in their trade. Owners of runaway 
slaves flocked to his camp demanding their "chat- 
tels," and he had to reconcile justice and contra- 
dictory orders as to how he must deal with them. 
General McClernand, one of the men who had 
addressed his Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers be- 
fore they left Springfield, set himself systemati- 
cally to work to supersede him in his command. 
During all this time there was much fighting 
between small bodies of his troops and of the 
Confederates. Sometimes there were even battles 
that for numbers engaged and losses suffered 
equaled the famous conflicts of Grant's Mexican 
campaigns, but were so dwarfed by the battles 
that came before and after them as to be almost 
lost sight of. The two most important were at 
luka, Mississippi, on September 19th, and at 
Corinth on October 3d and 4th, when a Con- 
federate force tried to retake the town, almost 
succeeded, and was repulsed. 



VIII 

THE MAN WHO KEPT ON TRYING 

AS they marched to the war the banners of cer- 
l\. tain western recruits bore the legend : "The 
rebels have closed the Mississippi. We must cut 
our way to the Gulf with our swords." There was 
sentiment in this, for the people who live near it 
love the great river with a deep affection; but 
there was also sound sense. Complete control of 
the Mississippi would cut the Confederacy in two, 
depriving it of the States of Arkansas, Louisiana, 
and Texas, and also of the Indian Territory— a 
vast region to the west, capable of furnishing 
practically unlimited food supplies and large 
bodies of armed men. It would also enable the 
United States once more to supply cotton to the 
mills of Europe. More important still, it would 
silence all doubt of final success in putting down 
the rebellion, and effectually discourage England 
and France, who seemed inclined to interfere in 
our family quarrel on behalf of the southern 
States. 

190 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 151 

It was not only the western recruits who under- 
stood this. Ahnost every western cami)aig'n had 
been planned with that for its direct or ultimate 
object. The fleets of gunboats under Farragut 
and Porter, Foote and Davis, that did such excel- 
lent service on our western rivers, working in 
harmony with the armies 'Mike two shears of the 
scissors," as has been happily said, had been 
created with that end in view. But up to this time 
the end had not been accomplished. 

The course of the Mississippi river through the 
southern States is down a great valley about forty 
miles wide, through which it winds, cutting new 
channels for itself in the soft rich earth at every 
time of freshet. The old channels left behind 
form a tangle of lakes and sluggish arms of the 
stream called bayous, interspersed with soggy 
islands and swamps that are an impenetrable mass 
of mud and fallen trees and creeping vines. It is 
a country through which no army could march, 
and its flat low shores offered no foothold upon 
which strong batteries could be placed. Federal 
gunboats were therefore able to find their way 
unhindered through the network of abandoned 
channels until they reached certain points where 
the river leaves the center of the valley to sweep 
close to the heights that form its eastern edge. 
At these places the Confederates established their 



152 THE BOYS'' LIFE OF 

defense. Here batteries planted on the tops of 
bluffs eighty to two hundred feet above the water 
were almost as much out of reach of guns upon 
boats as if they were in the clouds ; while the bat- 
teries, on the contrary, were so placed as to de- 
liver a plunging fire hard for ships to withstand. 
In spite of this, one after the other these places 
fell, partly through the excellent work of the gun- 
boats, and partly because the advance of Union 
armies, though far inland, opened the way to 
them in the rear, and made it impossible for the 
Confederates to hold them. Vicksburg, the chief 
one, fortified until it was known as the Gibraltar 
of the West, yet remained. It guarded almost 
two hundred and fifty miles of river, including the 
mouth of the Red river, the natural avenue lead- 
ing into the fertile States to the west ; and as long 
as Vicksburg held out, all that country, with its 
food and its forage, its cotton and its recruits, 
went to strengthen the southern cause. The Mis- 
sissippi protected Vicksburg in front. To the 
north, twelve miles away, the Yazoo river flowed 
into the Mississippi, and at their junction was a 
height called Haines's Bluff, that commanded all 
approaches to the town in that direction. To the 
south, quite two hundred miles away, but serving 
the same purpose of keeping hostile troops at bay, 
were Grand Gulf and Port Hudson. Back of 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 153 

Vicksburg the country was so rugged and full of 
deep ravines as to be almost impassable for an 
army. Twice since the fall of New Orleans in 
April, 1862— once in May and again in June of 
that same year— Admiral Farragut had ascended 
the river to this point. The second time he 
brought with him Admiral Porter and a fleet of 
mortar boats, and they succeeded in running past 
the batteries and bombarding it from the north 
for some time, but General Halleck refused to 
send troops to aid them, claiming that he needed 
all he had for his elaborately cautious approach on 
Corinth, and the rapidly falling waters of the 
Mississippi made it necessary for the boats to 
hurry down-stream. At that time a comparatively 
small force could have taken the place, for its 
defenses were not finished. 

Grant had watched all these movements with 
deep interest. Both as a general and as a western 
man his mind dwelt on this most important of all 
military projects in the West. Hampered as he 
was by the legacy of Halleck's plans and orders, 
it was the middle of October, 1862, before he felt 
that he could seriously undertake the task. At 
that time he had about 48,500 available men 
scattered at different points. His opponent, the 
Confederate General Pemberton, had in the 
neighborhood of 37,500. 



154 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Having got his men together Grant started in 
the latter part of November on a campaign south- 
ward toward Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, 
which lies almost directly east of Vicksburg, 
meaning at that point to turn and approach it 
from the rear. So far in his campaigning he had 
had the Tennessee river as a safe and sure means 
of bringing him supplies; but on this expedition 
he had to turn away from the river and trust to 
the more uncertain means of railroads and 
wagon-trains to feed his army. Railroads are 
easily destroyed in a hostile country, while long 
wagon-trains are almost impossible to guard; and 
Grant, whose experience as quartermaster had 
taught him the full truth of the statement once 
made by the Duke of WelHngton that "every 
army travels like a serpent on its belly"— that the 
best army in the world is useless if unfed— de- 
cided that he must modify his plan. He sent his 
friend General Sherman, who commanded a por- 
tion of the soldiers, back to Memphis, with orders 
to come down the Mississippi river and attack 
Vicksburg from the north, while he, unselfishly 
content that Sherman should have the more bril- 
liant part, remained in the background near 
Jackson, to keep reinforcements from entering 
Vicksburg, or to follow the enemy in case he 
retreated. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 155 

Sherman, obeying these instructions, left Mem- 
phis on December 20th for the Yazoo river where 
he was to make his attempt. That very day 
Grant's fears for the safety of his Hne of suppHes 
were unhappily verified. The Confederate Gen- 
eral Win Dorn fell upon Holly Springs, where 
Grant had gathered together large quantities of 
food and ammunition, valued at $1,500,000, cap- 
tured the place and burned all the stores, while 
General Forrest of the Confederate cavalry man- 
aged to break up the railroad by which new sup- 
plies could be sent to him. It was a week before 
he could get into touch again with the North, and 
two weeks before rations could be issued to his 
army in the regular way. The disaster had its 
compensations, however. During the interval 
Grant's soldiers and horses had no food except 
what they could pick up in the neighborhood. 
This "living on the enemy's country" had often 
been done in thickly settled districts of Europe, 
and General Scott, it will be remembered, tried it 
with brilliant success during part of his campaign 
against the city of Mexico; but up to the time 
Grant was involuntarily forced to adopt it in Mis- 
sissippi it had been deemed impracticable for this 
country. His men did not suffer, and both he and 
General Sherman treasured the knowledge gained 
by this fortnight's experience, and used it to great 



156 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

effect later in the war. Another good result of 
the break in communications was that it finally 
ended in Grant taking command in person at 
Vicksburg, instead of leaving that part of the 
enterprise to some one else. Just before the attack 
or Holly Springs he received orders from Wash- 
ington to place General A. J. McClernand in com- 
mand of that part of his troops operating from 
the north. This was a great disappointment to 
Grant, for he distrusted McClernand, who was 
frankly hostile to him, as much as he loved and 
trusted Sherman. He sent off the necessary des- 
patches and letters at once, but the Confederate 
attack broke his line of communications, and the 
word did not reach McClernand for some days. 
Meantime Sherman's attack failed, not through 
any fault of his, but because of the difficult nature 
of the ground; and the various complications re- 
sulting from this failure and the belated order to 
McClernand were so many and varied that it 
seemed only possible to remedy them by taking 
command in person, which Grant's instructions 
permitted him to do. General McClernand com- 
plained bitterly against being removed, in letters 
most insubordinate in tone, but Grant paid no at- 
tention, saying to those who sought to have him 
properly dealt with : *'No, I cannot afford to quar- 
rel with a man I have to command." Historians 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 157 

have made too niucli of the incident, so far as it 
aflfected the war. As far as Grant's character is 
concerned, it throws a most satisfying hght on the 
quiet general who had learned to govern himself 
as well as to command others. 

Two different attempts against Vicksburg, his 
own by way of Jackson, and Sherman's on the 
Yazoo, had already failed; but it was not Grant's 
way to give up a project once entered upon. His 
personal objection to turning back was as strong 
as it had been in the days of his courtship. More- 
over, as he saw it, the state of the country forbade 
his making any movement that looked like a re- 
treat. The North was becoming very much dis- 
heartened. General Lee still held his ow^n in spite 
of all the efforts that had been made against him. 
Military successes in the West, which had been 
brilliant and plentiful in the first half of 1862, had 
ceased entirely. Recent elections had gone 
strongly against the party pledged to carry on the 
war. Volunteering had practically stopped, and 
it was necessary to draft men into the service in 
order to keep up the armies. These were indeed 
the darkest days of the struggle, and many 
devoted Unionists began to feel that the w^ar was 
after all doomed to failure. Grant's point of view 
was entirely different. He recognized the critical 
situation, but he had no thought of giving up. He 



158 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

thought that "there was nothing left . . . but to 
go forward to a decisive victory." In January, 
1863, he joined General Sherman at Milliken's 
Bend about twenty miles above Vicksburg. Ad- 
miral Porter was there also with a large river 
squadron, seventy vessels all told, eleven of them 
ironclads ; and the real work of the campaign and 
siege of Vicksburg began. 

They were on the west bank, where the ground 
is rarely more than a few inches above water- 
level, and stretches for miles in an interminable 
maze of bayous, swampy islands, and old river 
channels. Opposite, as unapproachable as a city 
in the clouds, was Vicksburg on its two-hundred- 
foot chff, bristling with fortifications. Grant's 
problem was to land his army on the same side of 
the stream with the town, and to get successfully 
in its rear. He tried several experiments before 
he succeeded. 

The river bends in a great loop opposite Vicks- 
burg, in such a way that gunboats, to run its bat- 
teries, were obliged to pass twice under their fire. 
One of the experiments was to cut a canal across 
the tongue of land formed by this bend, so that the 
flotilla might sail by out of range of the Vicks- 
burg guns. Another was to force the boats up 
the twisting and swampy Yazoo in search of a 
landing-place north of Haines's Blufif. A third, 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 159 

to send them two hundred miles up the Missis- 
sippi and attempt to find a connecting way at that 
point into the Yazoo— in other words, to come 
down that stream instead of going up it, to the 
hoped-for landing. A fourth project was to cut 
a canal into Lake Providence, west of the Missis- 
sippi, seventy miles above Vicksburg, to find 
a practicable water-way through two hundred 
miles of bayous and rivers, join General Banks 
and Admiral Farragut who were trying to cap- 
ture Port Hudson, and, after the fall of that place, 
for the combined forces to turn north and take 
Vicksburg. Immense undertakings, all of them, 
pursued under difficulties hard to realize, in a 
country where land and water are hopelessly con- 
fused. One sentence from Admiral Porter's 
report brings the strange conditions vividly to 
mind. He is referring to his boats. "I never 
yet," he says, "saw vessels so well adapted to 
knocking down trees, hauling them up by the 
roots, or demolishing bridges." And the soldiers 
were engaged in tasks equally laborious and un- 
usual. 

It was not alone natural conditions that made 
the country so difficult. Sharp-shooters lurked in 
the swamps. Forts valiantly manned made the 
difficult way still more inaccessible. Squads of 
negroes driven at the point of the bayonet felled 



i6o THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

great trees in front and rear of the slowly moving 
gunboats. Expeditions by day and night were 
necessary to rescue the imperiled fleet, in one of 
which at least Sherman, finding a narrow path 
through a cane-brake, personally led his men, who 
lighted their way by candles and torches. The 
campaign was a phantasmagoria of fighting, in 
which everything unusual and unexpected hap- 
pened except success. 

Three months of such work in swamps and 
dampness brought inevitable diseases in their 
train. More graves had to be dug for the men 
who died of sickness than for those picked off by 
the bullets of the sharp-shooters. People began 
to murmur at the folly and waste of such opera- 
tions. It seemed as though Grant were going the 
way of the other generals who had begun with 
brilliant promise and ended in disappointment. 
Those who had been loudest in his praise after 
Donelson now clamored to have him removed. 
Even his friend Washburne, his stanch defender 
in Congress, began to doubt. President Lincoln, 
however, stood by him, and also General Halleck, 
who, since he had been transferred to Washing- 
ton, and had better opportunities of comparing 
Grant's actions and methods with those of other 
generals, saw him in a fairer light. 

Grant had one more plan— had had it all win- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT i6i 

ter ; but it must wait to be put into action until the 
spring rains were over and the roads again firm. 
Meanwhile he was convinced that the troops suf- 
fered less, both in health and spirits, in the work 
they were doing than they would if held idly wait- 
ing in camp for the waters to go down. So he 
kept his own counsel as was his habit, hoping, but 
not really expecting, that these web-footed labors 
of the army and forestry operations by the navy 
might lead to some good result. 

In April when the roads were beginning to dry, 
he communicated the plan he had cherished all 
winter to Admiral Porter, whose assistance was 
necessary in carrying it out. He had no right to 
command Porter; it must be voluntary help or 
none. The Admiral agreed at once, heartily and 
enthusiastically, and set about preparing his part 
of the expedition. Grant's ablest generals, on the 
other hand, were appalled. If the others had been 
fantastic, this scheme looked like sheer madness. 
It was certainly against all rules of military science 
laid down in books— nothing less than that Ad- 
miral Porter, with fifteen or twenty vessels, iron- 
clads, transports, and provision boats, should run 
boldly past the fourteen miles of Confederate bat- 
teries that protected Vicksburg, while Grant, with 
35,(300 men, marched by a roundabout route sixty 
or seventy miles down the west bank of the Mis- 

10 



i62 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

sissippi, crossed with the help of Porter's boats, 
and proceeded northward again on the east side, 
living meanwhile off the enemy's country and 
fighting battles whenever necessary until they 
reached and took Vicksburg. The generals pro- 
tested that the boats could not possibly pass the 
batteries, and that even if they did, and the army 
got safely across, the expedition would be com- 
pletely cut off from supplies, and from any 
possible chance of reinforcement. Grant listened 
to all they had to say, then answered, "I remain of 
the same mind," and ordered that the movement 
be made. The naval preparations went on behind 
a screening forest that hid them from the enemy. 
Here the boats were prepared with all possible 
secrecy, being piled high with cotton and grain to 
protect their boilers, and to hide as much as pos- 
sible the light of their fires. The night of the i6th 
of April was the time set for the attempt, and 
when it came men were stationed in the holds of 
the transports to stop up with cotton, as well as 
they could, shot-holes that might be made in their 
hulls. 

Silently, at ten o'clock. Admiral Porter's flag- 
ship swung out into the current. Silently, at 
intervals of a few minutes, the others followed. 
Grant and his staff watched from a transport 
anchored in midstream as near the enemy as it 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 165 

was safe to go. Silently the seconds passed in an 
intensity of waiting. Then a shot from a single 
battery pierced the night. Another and another 
took up the alarm. Bonfires were lighted, and 
the torch was laid to frame houses until a light 
brighter than that of day illumined the whole 
shore, and in the glare of flame and the noise 
of cannonading the boats slipped past, out of 
Grant's sight, though not out of his hearing, for 
they were under fire for more than two hours. 
Each one was struck many times, but no lives 
were lost, and the damage to the boats themselves 
was slight. Grant was greatly relieved when he 
heard that they were safely past. He and his 
men made their march and rejoined the fleet op- 
posite Grand Gulf, where it had been planned to 
silence the batteries and land; but after trying 
for five and a half hours, without disabling a 
single one of the Confederate guns planted high 
on the bluff, the attempt was abandoned. Grant 
watched this engagement from a tug well within 
range of the enemy's fire, "but," he explains, "a 
small tug, without armament, was not calculated 
to attract the fire of batteries while they were 
being assailed themselves." Once again the 
Union ships ran past Confederate batteries, and 
a landing was finally effected at Bruinsburg, a 
few miles below. 



i66 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Then began a march which has few equals in 
miHtary history. Gathering together a motley 
collection of country vehicles to transport his 
ammunition, depending entirely upon the supplies 
his men could pick up on their march, as they had 
been taught to do by the Holly Springs disaster, 
he cut loose from the river, his only means of com- 
municating with his own people, and pushed into 
the enemy's country, sending as his last word to 
Halleck the message, "You may not hear from 
me for several days." 

The army traveled with almost no baggage. 
Only one tent was allowed each company, and 
that to protect the supplies from rain. There is 
a tradition that Grant's personal luggage was 
limited to a toothbrush. The men soon learned 
that their general had no camp-chest, not even a 
valise, or a change of clothes ; that he was taking 
the hardships of the campaign as they came, as 
simply as any private soldier. They saw him 
moving about among them on a borrowed horse, 
silent, careworn, spattered with mud, but confi- 
dent and determined; eating where he could, 
sleeping on the ground wherever night overtook 
him, bowing his head to the rain as patiently as 
an Indian; and leading them to victory like one 
inspired. They had respected him before. Now 
they came to love him. They spoke of him as 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 167 

"the old man," as he rode by, but if they had said 
"the anointed of the Lord" they could not have 
expressed more genuine admiration. 

His responsibility was enormous. If he failed 
he would not only lose his reputation but his 
splendid army, and possibly the Union cause. If 
he succeeded the Mississippi would once more be 
free. He accepted the risk, cut himself off from 
all chance of interference as well as of help, and 
during the first twenty days of May marched his 
men 180 miles and fought five battles— at Port 
Gibson, at Raymond, at Jackson, the capital of 
Mississippi that he had failed to reach before, at 
Champion's Hill, and at Big Black river— win- 
ning each one, capturing eighty-eight guns and 
over six thousand prisoners, and by these victories 
shutting General Pemberton and his army within 
the fortifications of Vicksburg. 

On the 19th of May Grant and Sherman stood 
together on Haines's Bluff, looking down on the 
spot from which Sherman had been beaten back 
at Christmas time. Sherman turned with anima- 
tion to the younger, quieter man. "General," he 
said, "this is the end of one of the greatest cam- 
paigns in history. You ought to make a report at 
once." But Vicksburg was not yet taken, and 
Grant, though pleased, shook his head and turned 
to the matter in hand. 



i68 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

His men were eager to assault, and thought 
they could capture the town in an hour. Grant, 
hearing that General Joseph E. Johnston and a 
large force were coming to the relief of Pember- 
ton, gave permission. The result was the two 
assaults of the 19th and 22d of May, days of in- 
credible exertion and bravery, in which the Fed- 
eral soldiers, scrambling through cane-brakes 
and up and down rugged ravines, charged in 
some places to the very base of the parapets, or 
even planted their flags upon them, but, unable to 
go further, were obliged to lie close under the walls 
until darkness came and they could be brought 
out of reach of the enemy's guns. The losses 
were very great, and not a single redoubt was 
taken. After that officers and men understood 
that the brave city could only be conquered by 
siege. It was, however, merely a question of time. 
The Union gunboats commanded the river. 
Union troops well supplied with food and ammu- 
nition surrounded it by land. Slowly but surely 
famine would undermine its defense. The people 
in the town, both troops and non-combatants, 
seemed animated by the same spirit of resistance. 
The Union trenches pressed nearer and nearer, 
and their guns crashed murderously into the 
town. Then the inhabitants in their turn bur- 
rowed into the clay bluffs, digging caves for 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 169 

themselves and their famihes out of the way of 
exploding shells. These they furnished and lived 
in, family life and garrison life going on side by 
side and mingling in scenes of horror and sublime 
if misplaced heroism, while the army outside 
crept relentlessly nearer, and food and ammuni- 
tion became ever scarcer in the doomed city. 

By the ist of July the two picket lines were so 
close together that chaffing conversations were 
held between the combatants. "Well, Yank, when 
are you coming to town?" the besieged would ask, 
and the Union soldiers would reply that they 
meant to celebrate the 4th of July within its walls, 
or retort that they were already holding the Con- 
federates prisoners of war and making them feed 
themselves. 

The threat of the Yankee pickets to capture the 
town on the 4th of July had its effect. Clearly the 
Confederates expected an assault, and as clearly 
they were not able to withstand one. On the 3d 
flags of truce appeared, and General Pemberton 
asked for an armistice. Grant replied that an 
unconditional surrender would be required, but 
added that troops as brave as the defenders of 
Vicksburg must always command respect and be 
treated with the honors due prisoners of war. 

Pemberton was an old acquaintance. It was he 
who had brought General Worth's compliments 



170 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

to Lieutenant Grant for his work in the church 
steeple at the taking of the city of Mexico. They 
met between the Hues — Grant, small, compact, 
quiet, with short brown beard and thin closed lips, 
showing no emotion, whatever he may have felt ; 
Pemberton laboring under evident excitement. 
There was an awkward silence, then Pemberton 
broke out in protests that his troops were not to 
be allowed terms and conditions. 

"All the terms I have are stated in my letter," 
Grant replied. 

"Then," said Pemberton, "the conference 
might as well end." 

"Very well," the other answered, as cold and 
inexorable as fate. 

But the accompanying generals protested, 
knowing that Grant's army was never better able 
to fight, and that the Confederates had reached 
the limit of their endurance. After further par- 
ley, not too pleasant, Grant returned to his camp 
and wrote out the terms he was willing to grant. 
These were so liberal that his own officers remon- 
strated, but he paid no heed to them. Next day — 
on the 4th, as had been predicted— the Con- 
federate army marched out of Vicksburg, a 
ragged, sad-faced company over 31,000 in num- 
ber, pinched and thin to the verge of starvation. 
They stacked their arms, threw down their knap- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 171 

sacks and other accoutrements, then sorrowfully 
crowned the piles with their tattered battle-flags 
and marched back again into the town to wait, 
prisoners of war, until they could be paroled. Not 
a cheer went up from the Union ranks. These 
men were their enemies, but they were also their 
brothers, and as brothers and not as enemies they 
looked on at the scene of their humiliation. 

Grant rode into Vicksburg with the troops, and 
went to the water-side to exchange congratula- 
tions with the navy. He saw the townspeople liv- 
ing in their caves, and found that the supply of 
food was indeed exhausted. He at once issued 
ten days' rations to the inhabitants, and though 
he came as a victor, it must have been with feel- 
ings of thankfulness as well as grief that they 
beheld him riding through their streets. 

The country again rang with his praises. He 
was quickly promoted to be major-general in the 
regular army, the rank he held before being only 
in the volunteer service. In addition to this offi- 
cial recognition President Lincoln sent him a most 
cordial private letter, thanking him for the "al- 
most inestimable service" he had done the coun- 
try, telling him how his own ideas of the campaign 
had differed in certain particulars from Grant's, 
and ending with the generous acknowledgment, 
"you were right and I was wrong." 



172 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

Grant accepted the praise as he had the blame, 
with outward calm, and went about his further 
tasks with undiminished simplicity. He did not 
exult over his victory — in fact, scarcely alluded to 
it twice, even to his wife. When some friend tried 
to compliment him on his "grand logistics" and 
"brilliant strategy," he answered simply that he 
did not know much about that. He had "just 
pounded away until he pounded the place down !" 



IX 

THE nation's hero *: 

ON that same 3d of July a great victory was 
gained over General Lee at Gettysburg, 
Pennsylvania. These two successes proved the 
turning point of the war. It was to continue for 
two years longer, and the hardest fought and 
bloodiest battles w^re still to come, but these two 
victories, occurring almost at the same moment, 
one in the East, the other in the West, gave the 
Confederate cause a blow from which it never 
rallied. 

Next to Vicksburg the point of greatest im- 
portance in the West was Chattanooga in East 
Tennessee, near the border of Georgia. It was in 
a mountain region where railroad lines from the 
west and southwest centered and connected with 
other lines to the Atlantic coast. Just as the fall 
of Vicksburg opened the Mississippi river, the 
undisputed possession of this place would close 
the principal avenue from the southwest into Vir- 
ginia and practically force the rest of the war 
into the eastern States. General Rosecrans was 

»73 



174 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

in command in that region, but things had not 
gone well with him. To the country at large both 
he and Grant had seemed to be dawdling inter- 
minably. Really each was doing his best. 
Grant's best resulted in the taking of Vicksburg. 
Rosecrans, on the other hand, fought on Sep- 
tember 19th and 20th the severe and losing battle 
of Chickamauga, and October, 1863, found him 
practically in a state of siege at Chattanooga, 
with his leading commanders more or less at 
odds, and his lines of communication so fre- 
quently attacked that his army was on half ra- 
tions, and 10,000 of his horses and mules had 
already died of starvation. Jefferson Davis 
visited the Confederate camp at this time, and 
looking down from the heights of Lookout 
Mountain rejoiced that his generals had the 
Yankees ''like rats in a trap." 

After Vicksburg some of Grant's troops had 
been sent to help Rosecrans. Others were with- 
drawn to other points, so that his desire to go at 
once on an expedition against Mobile had to be 
abandoned. In August he went to New Orleans 
to confer with General Banks, and while there 
suffered a serious accident, his horse falling upon 
him and injuring him so severely that he was un- 
conscious for some time and badly crippled for 
several weeks. While lying helpless in bed in his 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 175 

hotel at New Orleans he received telegrams urg- 
ing him to despatch all the troops he could spare 
to Rosecrans. He sent for a litter, had a steam- 
I boat come to the point in the river nearest his 
hotel, was carried aboard and taken to Vicksburg, 
where, though still an invalid, he was with his 
command. On the loth of October a despatch 
dated a week earlier reached him, ordering him, 
as soon as he was able to travel, to go to Cairo and 
report from there by telegraph to Washington. 
He was still painfully lame, but before nightfall 
he and his staff were on their way. At Cairo he 
was ordered to proceed at once to Louisville, 
Kentucky, to meet an officer of the War Depart- 
ment with his instructions. Within two hours he 
was off for Louisville. Before reaching there he 
was joined by the officer in question, who proved 
to be no less a person than the Secretary of War 
himself. Up to that time Grant had not been told 
what was wanted of him. Now Mr. Stanton 
handed him two orders dated October i6th, say- 
ing he might take his choice. They were alike 
except in one particular. Both created the mili- 
tary Department of the Mississippi, giving Grant 
command of all the territory between the Al- 
leghanies and the Mississippi river, with the ex- 
ception of that held by General Banks in the 
southwest. The dift'erence was that one order 



176 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

left the department commanders as they were, 
while the other relieved General Rosecrans and 
placed General Thomas in his stead. General 
Thomas's skill and steadiness had been the one 
redeeming feature of Rosecrans's disastrous 
battle of September 19-20, where he gained for 
himself the name of the "Rock of Chickamauga." 

Grant unhesitatingly chose this order, and 
learning that there was a rumor that the Union 
troops might abandon the town, telegraphed 
Thomas to hold Chattanooga at all hazards. His 
answer, "We will hold the town till we starve," 
woke a responsive chord in Grant's own breast, 
though he did not comprehend its full force until 
he saw with his own eyes the pass to which 
Thomas's army was reduced. 

On the 20th of October he started for Chat- 
tanooga, stopping the first night at Nashville— 
because travel beyond that point could only be 
prudently undertaken by day— and suifering 
martyrdom there while Andrew Johnson the gov- 
ernor rolled forth an interminable speech of wel- 
come. All next day he traveled by train, and all 
of the two following days on horseback through 
drenching rain, over a country made desolate by 
war. On the way he met General Rosecrans, the 
superseded commander, who explained very 
clearly the situation at Chattanooga, and made 



'ULYSSES S. GRANT 177 

some excellent suggestions. Grant wondered 
silently why he had not carried them out. It was 
a cruel ride for a well man, let alone for one who 
was lame. At some places the roads were unsafe 
even for horses, and here the soldiers of Grant's 
escort carried him in their arms. To his practised 
eye the desolate way told its own tale of starva- 
tion and disaster. Everything in the shape of 
food and forage was gone — the ground was 
stripped quite bare. The wrecks of broken 
wagons and the carcasses of faithful horses that 
had died in harness lined the road. The rain fell 
in sheets, and he was racked with pain, for his 
horse had slipped and further injured the bruised 
limb. When he reached General Thomas's head- 
quarters about nightfall of the second day he had 
to be lifted from his horse. 

But he gave no thought to bodily comfort. 
Both he and General Thomas were too much en- 
grossed with the situation to think of food and 
dry raiment. When the suggestions were made 
by the younger officers Grant refused the clothing 
but ate the food, sitting in front of a blazing fire, 
the floor around him wet with little pools from 
his soaked garments, while he listened silently and 
attentively to the chief of engineers and others 
who pointed out on a large map the positions of 
both armies. Then he began firing whole volleys 



178 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

of questions at the officers, each question going 
like a dart to the center of the matter. After that 
he turned to a table and became obHvious of their 
presence, writing telegrams with an even, busi- 
nesslike precision at which they marveled. Then, 
making an appointment with General Thomas 
and General Smith, the chief of engineers, for an 
inspection of the lines early next morning, he 
hobbled ofif to his bedroom. 

Five days later the troops and such horses as 
were left were again enjoying full rations. Even 
before Grant arrived the fertile mind of General 
Smith had suggested a plan by which the long line 
of sixty miles over which provisions were being 
hauled could be reduced to eight. Encouragement 
and the energy of the new commander were all 
that were needed to put it into effect. These 
Grant gave in full measure. In ten days the men 
were strong, and the horses almost able again to 
haul the artillery, which had been rendered com- 
pletely useless by their weakness. Grant had a 
mind for everything, even to the smallest detail, 
and gave everything his personal attention. 
There was no telling when or how he might ap- 
pear. It might be alone on the picket line, or it 
might be in close conference with General 
Thomas and General Smith. An officer superin- 
tending a party of men working at night to lay a 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 179 

pontoon bridge, heard a patter of hoofs in the 
darkness. A man drew up, asked a few ques- 
tions, and rode on without giving a hint of his 
rank; but a ray of hght from one of the fires, 
screened to hide them from the enemy, fell upon 
his face as he passed, and the workers knew that 
their general had been with them at one o'clock in 
the morning. This was a new kind of general for 
that army. The change in the spirit of the men 
was remarkable. General Braxton Bragg and 
the other Confederate commanders suddenly 
awoke to the fact that they might not have their 
prey like rats in a trap after all; and Grant and 
his officers began to entertain fears lest the Con- 
federates move away and escape them. 

General Hooker had arrived from the east with 
two corps from the Army of the Potomac. Gen- 
eral Sherman had been sent for. As soon as he 
arrived Grant meant to give battle. Meantime he 
wrote his orders, leaving the dates blank. The 
fight, when it took place on the 23d, 24th, and 25th 
of November, was one of the most spectacular of 
the whole war, and its setting the most pictur- 
esque. Chattanooga lay in a great curve of the 
Tennessee river. Back of the town a level plain 
about two miles wide stretched to Missionary 
Ridge, a long narrow mountain five hundred feet 

high and several miles in length, the portion op- 
11 



i8o THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

posite the town crowned with heavy guns and 
abundant infantry. Some distance to the south 
and west was a much higher ridge called Lookout 
Mountain, whose northern end, dropping almost 
sheer into the Tennessee river, was likewise 
heavily fortified. The Confederates held both 
these important heights, and also a low hill on the 
level plain, called Orchard Knob. The task of the 
Union army was to dislodge Bragg from all these 
heights. Grant's plan in rough outline was that 
Sherman with his Army of the Tennessee should 
storm the north end of Missionary Ridge; that 
General Hooker, with his two corps from the 
Army of the Potomac, who had been camped some 
thirteen miles away because of the famine, should 
move toward Chattanooga, storming Lookout 
Mountain on the way, while General Thomas's 
men, being already in the city, should attack Mis- 
sionary Ridge directly in front. He meant to 
open battle on the 21st, but a rainstorm delayed 
him two days longer. 

On the 23d the clouds, which had filled the val- 
ley with fog all the morning, suddenly lifted, and 
the Confederates from their heights looked down 
on two splendid divisions of Union troops moving 
out with drums beating and colors flying. So 
measured and precise were their movements that 
the spectators thought it only a dress parade, and 



ULYSSES S. GRANT i8i 

looked on with pleased interest, but no deeper 
emotion. Suddenly at a signal the troops rushed 
forward, and before the Confederates realized 
what was happening, had driven in the pickets, 
seized the first line of Confederate rifle-pits and 
the low hill called Orchard Knob, and turned their 
guns upon the former occupants. It was a bril- 
liant and easy success, gaining important ground 
for future work, and invaluable in the cheer and 
confidence it gave the troops who had been beaten 
at Chickamauga and shut up so long in Chat- 
tanooga. Evening closed with a roar of artillery 
on both sides. 

Before daylight next morning Sherman and 
his men were on the south side of the Tennessee 
river, and by night had gained the point he had 
fixed upon in advance as the first position to be 
reached. Here, however, a grave disappointment 
awaited him. He had imagined Missionary 
Ridge one continuous hill. He now found a con- 
siderable valley between himself and the strong 
position of the enemy that was his real objective. 
He fortified himself and waited for daylight, the 
lights of his camp-fires that night giving Grant 
greater assurance of victory than he had really 
attained. 

It was at the other end of the valley that the 
chief interest of this day had centered. General 



i82 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Hooker and his men fulfilled their part most gal- 
lantly. Lookout Mountain, with its high pali- 
saded crest rising into the sky, its steep and deeply 
furrowed slopes defended by well-constructed 
rifle-pits and breastworks, was such a natural 
fortress that a handful ought to have held it in the 
face of overwhelming numbers. Hooker's force 
was about as large as the one that defended it. 
The strength of the Confederate position made 
the odds very strongly in favor of the latter. 
Valiantly but circumspectly the Federal troops at- 
tacked. Under trailing clouds of mist they 
slipped in where their opponents least expected 
them, and steadily, ceaselessly, intrepidly, ad- 
vanced, crouching sometimes under the very 
muzzles of the enemy's cannon ; again clambering 
over ledges and boulders, but driving their foe ever 
before them. All that their comrades in the plain 
could see were dense masses of shifting vapor 
through whose rifts came flashes of musketry, 
glimpses of moving banners, and of steadily ad- 
vancing Union lines. By two o'clock the clouds 
were so dense that the combatants themselves had 
to stop because of the darkness. Then when the 
clouds lifted the fight went on, but by four o'clock 
this unique battle above the clouds was over, and 
the Union flag had been planted where it would 
catch the first ray of the morning sun. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 183 

That night the enemy withdrew from the moun- 
tain. The Confederate commander, seeing where 
the real danger lay, threw all his available force 
against General Sherman, who attacked again at 
daylight on the 25th. Of that morning's battle 
little is to be said, except that both sides fought 
with the utmost gallantry without materially 
altering the situation. Sherman was not able to 
reach his coveted point ; the enemy was not able to 
do more than keep him at bay. From noon until 
three o'clock Sherman looked anxiously for help 
from General Thomas, who was to assault Mis- 
sionary Ridge when news reached him that Sher- 
man had progressed sufficiently to make his help 
of use. Meantime Grant and Thomas and a little 
group of Union officers stood together on Orchard 
Knob, anxiously watching, and the troops not en- 
gaged waited like well-bred hounds, straining at 
the leash, excited and restless at their apparent 
inaction, while the sounds of furious battle 
showed how their comrades were striving. Be- 
fore them, at a distance of from four hundred to 
five hundred yards, was the first line of Con- 
federate intrenchments. From there to the crest 
of Missionary Ridge, bristling with batteries, was 
another nine hundred yards. Half-way up was 
still a third line of works. 

At last the order was given— to take the first 



i84 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

line of batteries only, then halt and re-form. Like 
men upon holiday drill they passed through a 
wood, and then in the open beyond broke into 
double-quick and rushed at full speed upon the 
Confederate intrenchments. General Sheridan, 
in the lead, looking back upon this magnificent 
line of men and glittering steel, felt that nothing 
could withstand them. The Confederates, seeing 
the rush, threw themselves flat in their trenches, 
and the Union soldiers passed over and beyond 
them before they could stop. A thousand prison- 
ers were taken and sent to the rear under a rain 
of fire that their own batteries on the crest were 
pouring down on friend and foe alike. Here, ac- 
cording to orders, the Federal troops should have 
halted, but a spirit had been raised that no order 
could hold in check. The rifle-pits they had just 
taken were exposed to a deadly fire from the bat- 
teries above. To stop was death ; to go back im- 
possible to men filled with their ardor of battle. 
One by one, without orders, the color-bearers 
rushed to the front, and the men sprang after the 
colors. On and up they went, paying little heed to 
regiments and lines of formation. The colors 
led, the strongest men followed, the rest came 
after. A feeling of victory possessed them one 
and all, from the foremost corps commander to 
the last private, and the whole mass seemed to 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 185 

sweep up the hill together. Several times, out of 
breath with the furious rush, they dropped pant- 
ing on the mountain-side for a moment's rest, and 
the enemy at the top thought they had been re- 
pulsed. Then the blue line lifted itself and moved 
on again, heedless of the grape-shot and canister 
pouring down from the batteries above. 

The group of commanders on Orchard Knob 
watched with the utmost concern. When the 
troops broke away from the first line of rifle-pits 
and began the perilous ascent, Grant turned 
quickly to General Thomas and asked, "By whose 
order is this ?" Thomas, knowing his men, smiled 
a half-proud smile and answered, "By their own, I 
fancy." The blood of the little group on Orchard 
Knob tingled with excitement as the soldiers drew 
ever nearer to the summit. When they had 
almost reached the top the suspense was intoler- 
able. General W. F. Smith turned away his eyes, 
fearful of failure, but Grant watched, his face set 
in its battle-look of stern, alert intensity. As they 
poured over the crest at last like a breaking wave 
a cheer roused all the echoes in the valley. They 
must have been breathless, and exhausted enough 
to fall easy prey to fresh troops on the summit, 
but the suddenness of their rush and the exalta- 
tion that possessed them struck panic to the Con- 
federates, who gave way without resistance. 



i86 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Only a moment before General Bragg had been 
riding along the crest, waving his hat in triumph, 
deeming the charge repulsed. He turned to find 
his men in full flight, and the guns being turned 
upon their former owners. General Phil Sheri- 
dan, short and slight like a boy, but the most 
gallant cavalry officer on the Union side, had been 






in the lead below. He was at the top with the rest, 
horseless, but he climbed astride a cannon, and 
from there urged the men on in hot pursuit. 

Grant's self-repressed calm gave way to sudden 
and irresistible need for action. He ordered his 
horse and galloped furiously to the newly cap- 
tured ridge. When the men recognized him 
cheers went up from throats already parched and 
dry with shouting. They crowded around his 




ULYSSES S. GRANT 187 

horse and even clung to his stirrups, and it was 
night before he could escape from their ovation. 
If the country had applauded him after Donel- 
son, and blessed him for the fall of Vicksburg, it 
rang with his praises now. Congress voted him a 
gold medal, and E. B. Washburne, who had been 
his champion through good and ill, introduced a 
bill in Congress to revive the military grade of 
lieutenant-general that had been created for and 
had died with Washington, though it had been 
conferred upon General Scott by brevet fifty years 
later for his services in Mexico. There were 
those who contended that such a high military 
rank boded ill to the liberties of the republic, but 
the majority in Congress and the people at large 
felt that no honor was too great for their hero, 
and that the liberties of the republic would be safe 
in his hands. The bill was passed on the 26th of 
February, 1864, and signed by the President on 
the 29th. Grant was not mentioned in it by name, 
but there was no doubt as to the person for whom 
the honor was meant. Immediately upon signing 
it President Lincoln nominated Grant to the 
Senate for the office created by it. The nomina- 
tion was quickly confirmed, and on March 3d the 
Secretary of War directed him to report in person 
to the War Department as soon as he could with 
due regard to the welfare of his command. He 



i88 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

started the next day, taking with him his eldest 
son Fred, but even in the hurry of departure 
found time to write a letter to his friend and 
trusted brother-officer Sherman, which shows 
how far he was from taking too much credit to 
himself. He said : 

I start in the morning to comply with the order, 
but I shall say very distinctly on my arrival there that 
I shall accept no appointment which will require me 
to make that city [Washington] my headquarters. . . . 
While I have been eminently successful in this war, in 
at least gaining the confidence of the public, no one 
feels more than I how much of this success is due to 
the energy, skill, and the harmonious putting forth of 
that energy and skill, of those whom it has been my 
good fortune to have occupying subordinate positions 
under me. There are many officers to whom these re- 
marks are applicable to a greater or less degree, pro- 
portionate to their ability as soldiers, but what I want 
is to express my thanks to you and McPherson as the 
men to whom, above all others, I feel indebted for 
whatever I have had of success. How far your advice 
and suggestions have been of assistance, you know. 
How far your execution of whatever has been given 
you to do entitles you to the reward I am receiving, 
you cannot know as well as I do. I feel all the grati- 
tude this letter would express giving it the most flat- 
tering construction. The word yon I use in the plural, 
intending it for McPherson also. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 189 

Grant wrote in this strain to few of his fellow- 
officers. His friendships were warm and lasting. 
Others, like General Sheridan and General Raw- 
lins, were very near to him, but Sherman held a 
place of love apart. 

How fully Sherman returned the feeling is 
manifest in his answer: 

You do yourself injustice and us too much honor. 
. . . You arc now Washington's legitimate successor, 
and occupy a position of almost dangerous elevation; 
but if you can continue as heretofore to be yourself, 
simple, honest, and unpretending, you will enjoy 
through life the respect and love of friends, and the 
homage of millions of human beings. ... I repeat, 
you do General McPherson and myself too much 
honor. At Belmont you manifested your traits, neither 
of us being near; at Donelson also you illustrated 
your whole character. I was not near, and General 
McPherson in too subordinate a capacity to influence 
you. ... I believe you are as brave, patriotic, and 
just as the great prototype Washington; as unselfish, 
kind-hearted, and honest as a man should be; but the 
chief characteristic in your nature is the simple faith 
in success you have always manifested, which I can 
liken to nothing else than the faith a Christian has in 
his Saviour. This faith gave you victory at Shiloh 
and at Vicksburg. Also when you have completed 
your best preparations you go into battle without 
hesitation, as at Chattanooga— no doubts, no reserve; 



I90 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

and I tell you that it was this that made us act with 
confidence. I knew, wherever I was, that you thought 
of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come, 
if alive. 

His friend then went on to urge him not to stay 
in Washington, with its intrigues and politicians, 
but to return to the West and from there put 
down the rebelHon. They seemed both to have a 
strange dread of Washington as a place of snares 
and pitfalls — a dread partly due, no doubt, to 
their western up-bringing, and partly to the fric- 
tion and uncertainty that had seemed to assail 
every commander who took service in the East. 

But it was not to be. One of Grant's strongest 
traits as a military commander was his power to 
change his plans on the instant as change was 
needed. The most rapid survey convinced him 
that his true place was now in the East, and, 
though he returned to Nashville, it was only to 
make final arrangements, and turn over his com- 
mand to his successor. 

Meanwhile, as quietly and simply as he could, 
he journeyed to Washington with his little son. 
The clerks at Willard's paid scant attention to the 
plain man who stepped up to the desk on the 8th 
of March to register; but on reading his unpre- 
tentious entry, "U. S. Grant and son. Galena, 
Illinois," their manner underwent a sudden and 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 191 

mighty change. When a little later he entered 
the dining-room and took a seat in the corner, 
anxious only for quiet and refreshment after his 
long journey, people gazed curiously at the small, 
stockily built man dining with a little boy. Mili- 
tary uniforms were as plentiful as piccaninnies in 
Washington, but the shoulder-straps of a major- 
general on the shoulders of a stranger were 
uncommon enough to rouse remark. "Who is 
he?" was asked, and asked again, until somebody 
w^as found w'ho answered. Then shouts of 
"Grant! Grant! Grant!" echoed on every side. 
People sprang to their feet. "Where is he?" 
"Which is he?" "Three cheers for Lieutenant- 
General Grant!" and in response to the latter, 
given with a will, he had to rise and bow. Then, 
as the company bore down upon him, bent on 
shaking hands, he did what he had never done on 
the field of battle — he turned and fled. 

That night there was a public reception at the 
White House and the throng was very great, for 
it was thought the General might be present. 
About half-past nine he entered with Senator 
Cameron of Pennsylvania. Eager as the crowd 
had been, it did not at first recognize him. When 
it did a low murmur ran through the assemblage, 
and a movement, as each tried to get a glimpse of 
him. These heralded his approach, even before 



192 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

he reached the spot where the President stood. 
It was the first time they had met, the tall, sad- 
eyed President, stooping as if from the burden of 
responsibility he bore, and the short, determined 
soldier, who had done so much, and was to do still 
more, toward lightening that heavy load. A glow 
of genuine pleasure leaped into Mr. Lincoln's 
careworn face as he looked down on Grant, stand- 
ing before him, his head a little bent, his hand 
grasping the lapel of his coat, his eyes turned up- 
ward toward those of his taller chief. Moved by 
a sudden impulse of delicacy the crowd drew 
back, and there was a moment's hush as these two 
men, the simplest, the most powerful, and the 
humblest in the nation, clasped hands. Then Mr. 
Lincoln introduced Mr. Seward, and the Secre- 
tary of State took him away to present him to 
Mrs. Lincoln. Later, when they passed on into the 
great East Room, cheer after cheer rang out, and 
the throng pressed upon him so closely that he 
was forced at last, hot and blushing, to mount a 
sofa, and from there shake hands with his eager 
admirers. 

Before Grant left the White House that night 
the President, thoughtful as always of the needs 
of the country and the comfort of his guest, 
handed him the manuscript of the very short 
speech he meant to make on giving him his com- 



ULYSSKS S. GRANT 193 

mission, explaining- tliat he wished him to reply 
to it, and addini^: that as he knew the General was 
not accnstomed to public speaking-, they would 
both read what they had to say. Next day at one 
o'clock, in the presence of the cabinet, General 
Halleck, two members of Grant's staff, his son 
Fred, and the President's private secretary, 
Grant's commission as lieutenant-general was 
formally delivered to him by Mr. Lincoln. The 
President said: 

General Grant : The nation's appreciation of what 
you have done, and its reliance upon you for what re- 
mains to do in the existing great struggle, are now 
presented with this commission constituting you Lieu- 
tenant-General in the Army of the United States. 
With this high honor devolves upon you also a cor- 
responding responsibility. As the country herein trusts 
you, so, under God, it will sustain you. I scarcely 
need to add that with what I here speak for the nation, 
goes my own hearty personal concurrence. 

Grant had written his ansv^^er hurriedly in lead 
pencil on a half sheet of note-paper. He was so 
embarrassed and ill at ease that he found great 
difficulty in reading his own writing. What he 
said could, however, scarcely be improved upon: 

Mr. President : I accept this commission with grati- 
tude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of 



194 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

the noble armies that have fought on so many fields 
for our common country, it will be my earnest en- 
deavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel the 
full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on 
me; and I know that if they are met, it will be due to 
those armies, and above all to the favor of that Provi- 
dence which leads both nations and men. 

This short and formal ceremony was followed 
by a brief informal conversation in which Grant 
inquired of the President what special service 
was expected of him. Mr. Lincoln answered that 
the country wanted him to take Richmond, and 
asked if he could do it. Grant replied without 
hesitation that he could, provided he had troops 
enough; and these the President assured him 
would not be lacking. 



X 

HIS NEW TASK 

GRANT the unsuccessful was now head of all 
the armies in the United States, Washing- 
ton's "legitimate successor," in command of a 
great many more men than Washington ever con- 
trolled—and it was still possible to count in 
months back to the time when he tramped the 
streets of St. Louis looking for work, and his 
acquaintances turned aside to avoid meeting him ! 
He had gained his present position, not by trick 
or favoritism, but because of services rendered 
his country. Had he stopped to look back on all 
this he might well have felt a thrill of pride ; but 
one great secret of his success was that he did not 
dwell on what was behind him. He learned by 
experience, but in either success or failure, once 
a thing was over he ceased to dwell upon it, and 
turned his attention toward the problems of the 
future. 

The problem that confronted him now was 
to capture Richmond and vanquish Lee's army— 

12 



196 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

a problem that had broken the force or blasted 
the reputation of every general who preceded him. 
One after the other they had tried and failed. 
McClellan, with his magnetism and his wonder- 
ful power of organization, had created the Army 
of the Potomac, but he could not lead it to victory. 
McClellan's friend Burnside, who succeeded him, 
failed dismally. Hooker, who followed him, 
though warned by President Lincoln of the 
dangers that beset him, in the kindest letter ever 
written by a ruler of a great nation to the com- 
mander of its chief army, succeeded only in allow- 
ing Lee to penetrate into Pennsylvania. General 
Meade, appointed in Hooker's stead, won the bat- 
tle of Gettysburg, but threw away half his victory 
by tardiness in pursuit, and let the Confederate 
army, which he might have captured, escape 
across the Potomac and back again into the 
debatable ground between Washington and Rich- 
mond. Here the two armies confronted each 
other almost as they had done at the beginning of 
the war. Nearly three years earlier they had 
fought their first battle of Bull Run a short dis- 
tance north of where they now lay. Campaign 
had followed campaign, commander had followed 
commander. Battle and skirmish and marching 
had swayed them to the north and to the south, 
but neither could claim any substantial gain in 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 197 

ground or advantage. Now Grant, who had 
"pounded away" at Vicksburg until it fell, who 
by sheer force of will had retrieved the mistake at 
Shiloh, whose presence and resourcefulness had 
transformed the starving garrison of Chatta- 
nooga into the inspired conquerors of Missionary 
Ridge, had been called to undertake the task. It 
was his supreme test, and if he failed all his other 
successes would count as nothing. No wonder 
that a man of his earnestness and simplicity 
found little time to look into the past and grow 
vain. 

He had already made up his mind that his post 
of duty lay in the East, and not one word had been 
said about accepting the commission only on con- 
dition that he be allowed to return to the West. 
He had, however, no notion of lingering in Wash- 
ington. On the day after receiving his commis- 
sion he visited General Meade at his headquarters 
with the army. He had known Meade slightly in 
the Mexican War, but they had not met since. He 
was, indeed, a stranger to the entire Army of the 
Potomac, with the exception of a few officers he 
had known in earlier days. General Meade re- 
ceived him with the courtesy due his rank, and 
the generous magnanimity of one great nature to 
another. He knew, he said, that Grant might 
want Sherman or some other officer who had been 



198 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

with him in the West to take command of the 
Army of the Potomac. In that case he begged 
him not to hesitate to make the change. The work 
before them was too important to be blocked by 
considering any individual. For himself, he would 
serve to the best of his power wherever placed. 

Grant was much pleased by this frank and 
manly offer. It gave him a more favorable im- 
pression of Meade than even his victory at Gettys- 
burg had done. He answered that he had no 
thought of making a change. As for Sherman, 
he could not be spared from the West. After one 
day with General Meade, spent in studying the 
situation with the intensity peculiar to him, he 
returned to Washington, refused Mr. Lincoln's 
invitation to dinner and the many offers of hospi- 
tality that were showered upon him, with the 
characteristic explanation, "Really, Mr. Presi- 
dent, I am tired of all this show business," and 
started at once for Nashville to arrange his affairs 
and sever his connection with the western armies 
that had given him so many victories. He prom- 
ised the President to be back inside of ten days. 

Eastern newspapers made amazed and de- 
lighted comments on these swift and businesslike 
methods. "He hardly slept on his long journey 
east," they said, "yet he went to work at once. 
. . . He is not going to hire a house in Washing- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 199 

ton and make war ridiculous by attempting to 
manoeuver battles from an arm-chair." Another 
paper summed up the general satisfaction by de- 
claring, "We have found our hero." 

His mind was already made up as to what he 
wanted to do ; and in his military experience want- 
ing was usually a preliminary to success. Sher- 
man was promoted to fill his place in the West, 
and General McPherson to the position thus made 
vacant by Sherman ; McPherson in his turn being 
replaced by General Logan, and so on down the 
line. He telegraphed Sherman to meet him in 
Nashville, and the two friends discussed the com- 
ing campaign, Sherman accompanying him part 
way on his journey east, so as to save valuable 
time. The armies were now all under one head, 
and were to move forward for one common 
object, so far as possible at the same time and to- 
ward a common center. General Banks was to 
finish his work in Louisiana, and then with 25,000 
men move on Mobile. Sherman was to strike at 
General Johnston's army, with the heart of 
Georgia as his final goal. General Butler was to 
be given a force to operate against Richmond 
south of the James river. General Sigel in the 
Shenandoah Valley (by which route Lee had 
slipped into Pennsylvania) was to keep that 
natural highway free from intruders, and to cut 



200 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

the railroads that connected the Confederate 
capital with the southwest. Grant himself was to 
make his headquarters with the Army of the 
Potomac, which, though still commanded by 
Meade, would be under his own eye, and subject to 
his own energetic direction in the campaign 
against Lee's army and Richmond. Thus from 
every side the Union forces were to be moved 
against the Confederacy and the brave army that 
for three years had held its own against the best 
the Union generals and fighting men could do. 

Inside of ten days Grant was back again, and 
by the end of March had established his headquar- 
ters at Culpeper Court-house. April was spent 
in preparing for the great movement which it was 
hoped would end the war. On the last day of 
April, just before Grant started on his campaign, 
the President sent him the following letter, which 
shows, as nothing else could, the perfect trust ac- 
corded the new commander : 

Not expecting to see you again before the spring 
campaign opens, I wish to express in this way my en- 
tire satisfaction with what you have done up to this 
time so far as I understand it. The particulars of your 
plan I neither know nor seek to know. You are 
vigilant and self-reliant, and pleased with this, I wish 
not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. 
While I am very anxious that any great disaster or 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 201 



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Z-o />Ki>>»-_ <L/ ^:!^ji.^ t^ ^.t^^^:^^ A-T^-w^Slj A/'^-«-^A» t-'fZ^^ 
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LINCOLN S GOD-SPEED TO GRANT. 
Reduced facsimile of the orif^inat. 



202 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided, 
I know these points are less likely to escape your atten- 
tion than they would be mine. If there is anything 
wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail 
to let me know it. And now, with a brave army and 
a just cause, may God sustain you. 

Grant was much touched, and answ^ered with a 
warmth he reserved for only Sherman and his 
most intimate friends : 

Your very kind letter of yesterday is just received. 
The confidence you express for the future and satis- 
faction with the past in my military administration is 
acknowledged with pride. It will be my earnest en- 
deavor that you and the country shall not be disap- 
pointed. From my first entrance into the volunteer 
service of the country to the present day I have never 
had cause of complaint — have never expressed or im- 
plied a complaint against the administration, or the 
Secretary of War for throwing any embarrassment in 
the way of my vigorously prosecuting what appeared 
to me my duty. Indeed, since the promotion which 
placed me in command of all the armies, and in view 
of the great responsibility and importance of success, 
I have been astonished at the readiness with which 
everything asked for has been yielded, without even 
an explanation being asked. Should my success be 
less than I desire and expect, the least I can say is, the 
fault is not with you. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 203 

Grant had 122,146 men present for duty 
equipped. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia num - 
bered about 61,953. This was not so greatly in 
Grant's favor as it seems, for it must be remem- 
bered that the Confederate general had an immense 
advantage in position. The dense woods and 
swamps, as well as every hill, road, and footpath in 
that part of Virginia, were as well known to Lee as 
the trees on his own estate of Arlington, while to 
Grant they were utterly strange. Lee was in a 
country where each white inhabitant was his 
friend, and to the best of that person's ability, his 
assistant and co-worker. He could retire, if need 
arose, into prepared fortifications, where, accord- 
ing to Grant's opinion, given in after years, "one 
man inside to defend was more than equal to five 
outside besieging or assaulting." Of course this 
did not hold good in so large a measure outside the 
fortifications, but it went a long way toward 
equalizing the two forces. Another element of 
strength possessed by Lee's army was the con- 
scious pride that for three years it had success- 
fully barred the way to Richmond. 

Both armies were of the very best material that 
America could furnish. New troops in the Army 
of the Potomac rapidly took on the stability of 
veterans among their more experienced com- 
rades, while in Lee's practised hand the Army of 



204 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Northern Virginia was like a well-tempered blade. 
And on both sides the troops had commanders 
worthy of them. Grant we know. Lee was the 
man to whom the eyes of all southerners turned 
to save the Confederacy. At the breaking out of 
the war he had been the most promising of the 
younger officers of the army, the one upon whom 
General Scott relied to command the force of 
75,000 volunteers called out by President Lin- 
coln's first proclamation. He chose instead to 
resign and cast his fortunes with the South, where 
he speedily rose to a high place in its armies, and 
handled his men with a skill that made his name 
a household word in both sections of the country, 
and inspired his soldiers with a confidence that 
lasted long after their faith in Jefferson Davis 
had died, and all real hope of success was gone. 

Grant had known Lee in Mexico, and fully real- 
ized the quality of his antagonist. He knew that 
he was skilful and brave, the best commander on 
the Confederate side, at the head of the best army 
the rebellion could muster; but, as he says in his 
Memoirs : "The natural disposition of most people 
is to clothe a commander of a large army whom 
they do not know, with almost superhuman 
abilities. A large part of the national army, for 
instance, and most of the press of the country, 
clothed General Lee with just such qualities ; but 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 205 

I had known him personally, and knew that he 
was mortal— and it was just as well that I felt 
this." 

Grant realized that with such an antagonist the 
first thing to do was to conquer Lee's army. He 
might possess himself of the Confederate capital, 
and scatter its civil government to the four winds, 
but if Lee and his soldiers remained unharmed 
they could carry the contest farther south and 
prolong the war indefinitely. So Grant's plan 
was beautiful in its simplicity. "Lee's army wall 
be your objective point," he instructed General 
Meade. "Where Lee goes, there you will go 
also." 

There was no road to success that would not 
exact its frightful toll of blood, yet both sides 
were ready to shed their blood in fair quarrel, and 
the wearers of blue and gray looked forward with 
equal eagerness to the orders that were to usher 
in their final trial of strength. The patches of 
snow faded from the summits of the Blue Ridge, 
spring sunshine dried the roads and flung a veil 
of blossoms over the battle-scarred orchards of 
northern Virginia, and on the night of May 4, 
1864, Grant's army started on its final march to 
Richmond. Those who looked forward to a tale 
of blood were only too correct in their apprehen- 
sions. The orchards were once more to be 



2o6 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

wrecked by shot and shell. Spring was to pass 
into the heat and oppression of a southern sum- 
mer, summer into autumn, and winter again into 
spring before the end came ; and each hour was to 
take its toll of human life. 

The campaign divided itself into two parts. 
The first, a period of six weeks, was a season of 
swift marching and hard fighting, during which 
Grant strove to defeat Lee in open battle, and to 
end the war without the long preliminary of a 
siege. It was a contest of strategy and battle be- 
tween the two armies— a contest nearly equally 
matched, for while Grant did not succeed in con- 
quering or capturing Lee's army, he kept moving 
forward little by little and pushing it back upon 
its intrenchments at Richmond. 

The fighting was as intense and severe as the 
world has ever seen, and new in some respects in 
the history of war, for the lessons learned at 
Shiloh had not been forgotten, and at every 
change of position or halt for the night, whether 
the enemy was known to be at hand or not, arms 
would be stacked, and the soldiers turn from the 
labors of the march to those of intrenching, and 
almost before the tents were in place they would 
be protected by a line of serviceable defenses. 
Another innovation was the use of the telegraph, 
not such a very old invention in those days, and 




1 tuiu A pllotugraph hy llraily 
GENERAL GRANT AT HKAUyrAKTERS DURING THE VIRGINIA CAMl'AIGN 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 209 

never before carried to perfection in campaign 
and battle. 

Grant's endeavor was to get south of the 
enemy's forces, moving by the left flank — that is, 
bearing off toward his own left, and around the 
right of Lee's army. Lee instantly threw his own 
men against the flanks of Grant's columns, and 
before the campaign was two days old the armies 
were engaged in furious combat in the tangled 
country called the Wilderness, a labyrinth of trees 
and watercourses, bad roads and underbrush, 
where the commanders could not see their own 
men, and all intelligent direction and working to- 
gether of large masses of troops was impossible. 
The fight raged from the 5th to the 7th of May, 
and at the end was indecisive. The Army of the 
Potomac wondered if Grant, like all the others, 
had taken command only to be turned back. Most 
generals would have called a halt at least, after 
such an engagement. Instead, orders came to 
march— and to march forward. The hearts of 
the soldiers responded with a throb of joy. This 
was the commander they had been waiting for. 

On the loth of May there was a fight at Spott- 
sylvania Court-house, where Lee's strong posi- 
tion, made doubly strong by intrenching, was 
fiercely assailed, but to no purpose. The next day 
both armies rested, and it was at this point that 



210 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Grant, reporting the results of battle and loss in 
the six days since he left Culpeper, added, "I pro- 
pose to fight it out on this line if it takes all sum- 
mer"— a phrase pounced upon by northern 
newspapers and destined to as great celebrity as 
his famous "unconditional surrender." 

On the 1 2th there was a still more determined 
attack, when the Union forces succeeded in storm- 
ing and holding the earthworks that became 
known as the Bloody Angle, or more graphically 
still as Hell's Half Acre. Fortunately there have 
been few battles so worthy of either name. It was 
a hand-to-hand encounter across breastworks, in 
which the breastworks themselves were shattered 
into splinters, and trees a foot and a half in diam- 
eter completely cut in two by musket balls. Op- 
posing flags were thrust almost against each other, 
skulls were crushed by clubbed muskets, and guns 
fired muzzle to muzzle; and as rank after rank of 
soldiers was.mowed down others rushed up to take 
their places and fall in their turn. The story of it 
reads like one of the fabled battles of antiquity. 

Grant was not insensible to all this dreadful 
loss of life, though to some he seemed almost 
stolid on the field of battle. Not a muscle of his 
face quivered, and he gave no sign that he saw or 
heeded the carnage and the suffering. Quiet and 
vigilant he moved about, and wherever he went 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 211 

the troops cheered and fought the harder. He 
paid no attention to the shrieking of shot and 
shell, and the patter of balls. "There is no use 
dodging," he said. "When you hear the noise the 
thing has already passed by." He was one of the 
very few men whose nerves are steady enough to 
live up to this fact that their brains admit must be 
true. 

He was able to communicate a feeling of cer- 
tainty in the outcome to those about him, even by 
his silences. No matter how hurried the message 
or how desperate the chance the messenger came 
to announce, the mere sight of the chief sitting 
quiet and apparently unmoved, whittling and 
smoking, his hands, it may be, encased in a pair 
of brown-thread gloves whose origin is shrouded 
in mystery, but which appeared from time to 
time when the fortunes of war were darkest, 
brought with it an instant feeling of belief in the 
power of the quiet man whose low-voiced orders 
and pregnant questions showed that though his 
body might be still his mind was ever on the alert. 
The common soldiers felt this, too. People who 
were not fighting might picture him as a Nero, 
glorying in slaughter. To the men in the ranks, 
he was a hero and a friend. 'Ts it all right. Gen- 
eral?" one asked as the chief rode by. He re- 
ceived a nod, and a "Yes, I think so," and another 



212 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

looking up assured him, "General, we '11 lick 'em 
sure-pop next time." This was not familiarity; 
it was confidence. 

Only those who knew him intimately realized 
what it meant when his cigar went out and he 
chewed at it slowly, his eyes cast down, as if in 
meditation. That with him was a sure sisrn of 

o 

anxiety and intense thought. He kept his 
thoughts to himself, but the one who surprised 
him late at night, sitting solitary over the camp- 
fire, unable to sleep, read in his haggard looks and 
the nervous shiftings of his position, how deeply 
he was moved by all this frightful and seemingly 
fruitless sacrifice of human life. It was not alone 
the sufferings of his own wounded that filled him 
with sorrow. In his Memoirs he says, "While a 
battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed 
down by the thousand or the ten thousand with 
great composure; but after the battle . . . one is 
naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the"* 
sufiferings of an enemy as a friend." 

He was a great commander just because he had 
the large faculty of seeing and using his army as 
a collection of units and not as individuals; but 
he was none the less human because of that, nor 
did he grieve less sorely for the suffering he could 
not help. 

The past had been even more costly. Before 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 213 

his coming over 130,000 men had perished in the 
eastern armies, and there was httle to show for it. 
It seemed to him better that the enemy should he 
fought and concjuered, even at a tremendous loss 
of life, than that the war should drag on and on. 
Therefore haggard, but firm in his resolve to fight 
it out on that line "if it took all summer," he kept 
on his way. "Lee no longer commands both these 
armies," the soldiers exulted. "We 've got a gen- 
eral of our own now!" and they fell into line 
singing: 

"Ulysses leads the van! 

For we will dare 

To follow where 
Ulysses leads the van." 

And so, day after day the contest went on. Grant 
moving continually by the left flank, and the 
Confederates disputing every inch of the way. 

On May 26th he reported : "Lee's army is really 
whipped. The prisoners we now take show it, 
and the action of his army shows it unmistakably. 
A battle with them outside of intrenchments can- 
not be had. Our men feel that they have gained 
the morale over the enemy and attack him with 
confidence. I may be mistaken, but I feel that 
our success over Lee's army is already assured." 

Another week of marching and flanking and 

13 



214 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

fighting brought them to Cold Harbor, only ten 
miles from Richmond. Here Lee's intrenched 
army was once more between the Union troops 
and the Confederate capital. There was fighting 
on the 31st of May and on the ist of June; and on 
the 3d of June Grant ordered a final attack in 
front to break through the barrier. It failed dis- 
astrously, with a loss of between 5000 and 6000 
on the Union side, though the battle was practi- 
cally over by half-past seven o'clock in the 
morning. 

For many commanders the next move would 
have been a retreat. Grant and his men appar- 
ently disappeared off the face of the earth. For 
two days Lee did not know what had become of 
his enemy. "Where is Grant's army?" "Find 
Grant's army," he telegraphed frantically to his 
generals. What Grant had done was to move 
again by the left flank, "as though," one of his 
biographers says, "Cold Harbor had never ex- 
isted." It was a bold and audacious move, almost 
as audacious as the one which led to success at 
Vicksburg, for this time he had to withdraw his 
troops from their positions within a few hundred 
yards of the enemy, and there were two unbridged 
rivers, the Chickahominy and the James, to cross, 
while General Butler's army, with which he now 
meant to join forces, was .fifty miles away. Lee, 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 215 

having inside lines, with bridges across these riv- 
ers, could get to the south of Richmond ahead of 
him, or even fall upon General Butler and destroy 
him completely before Grant could arrive. "But 
the move had to be made," says Grant, "and I 
relied upon Lee not seeing my danger as I saw it." 

Cold Harbor had convinced him that Richmond 
was not to be taken without a siege, and this move 
was in preparation for it. He sent General Hal- 
leck a despatch of remarkable clearness stating his 
reasons for the change of plan. He had tried for 
thirty days to fight Lee outside of his intrench- 
ments, was convinced now that he would not ac- 
cept battle in the open, and that without greater 
sacrifice of life than Grant cared to make, he 
could not, on the old lines, accomplish all he 
wished to do. 

The loss of life had already been enormous. 
Sixty thousand men, the flower of the Army of 
the Potomac, had melted away. The labors of the 
comrades that remained had been prodigious, yet 
their confidence in the man who led them never 
faltered. The North might call Grant a 
"butcher." To the men who had the best right to 
make such a criticism he was "the old man," on 
their lips a term of endearment and mighty re- 
spect. Yet those w^re days when the glamour of 
war was past — when men calmly sewed their 



2i6 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

names and addresses on the backs of their coats 
before going into action, and when the shrieking 
of shells and the whistling of bullets recorded the 
loss of twenty-five lives every minute. This thing 
called personal magnetism is very strange. Mc- 
Clellan had it and kept his hold upon the men, 
though he could lead them to no victory. Grant, 
his opposite in every physical and soldierly quality, 
sent men to their death by the tens of thousands, 
yet possessed it in supreme degree. 

The fortifications around Richmond were very 
strong, and made to defend not only the city itself, 
but Petersburg, a town twenty-three miles to the 
south, from which the rebel capital' drew all its 
supplies. Three railroads and two plank roads 
centered there, and with Petersburg once in the 
hands of the Union army, the larger town must 
surrender or starve. Grant hoped by his secret 
and sudden move across the James river to gain 
possession of Petersburg before Lee could get 
there in sufficient force to resist him. In this he 
almost succeeded, but not quite, and the struggle 
settled down into the second part of his campaign, 
a nine months' siege of Richmond, or, more cor- 
rectly, of Richmond and Petersburg combined. 
The Confederate garrison of the two places num- 
bered altogether about 70,000, and Grant's forces, 
counting the reinforcements he received from the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 217 

North and the addition of General Butler's army, 
was about 150,000. But, as has been said before, 
one man inside those splendid fortifications 
equaled at least five men outside. 

Grant made his headquarters at City Point, and 
from there pursued the policy of alternately 
threatening Lee's defenses, sometimes to the 
north and sometimes to the south of the James 
river, and at every opportunity pushing his siege- 
works farther westward, to gain and command, 
one after the other, the roads that brought food 
and supplies to the Confederate armies and the 
inhabitants of the two towns. In time Grant's 
enveloping lines reached a total of forty miles, 
and the end came when Lee's army was no longer 
able to man his defenses along their entire length. 
Then Grant, finding the weak places, broke 
through, and the Confederate army was com- 
pelled to abandon both cities and seek safety in 
flight. But this end was still far ofif, and Lee did 
nothing to make Grant's task easy. 

All this time the other operations of the war 
went on. The siege of Richmond was only the 
central incident in the great drama. Grant was 
general of all the armies. They were all working 
toward the same end, and in a measure he was 
responsible for the success of each. He had to 
keep watch, not only of Richmond and of Lee, but 



2i8 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

of the whole field. Great things were pending. 
The end drew near, though it came so slowly that 
many good people in the North could not see its 
approach and grew despondent, even hopeless. 
They had looked for a speedy victory over Lee, 
and when the campaign settled down into a sullen 
siege they murmured, and thought only of the 
terrible losses of Grant's May battles. 

The time for electing a new President was fast 
approaching. Lincoln had been renominated by 
the Republican party in June in a whirlwind of 
enthusiasm ; but as the summer advanced and the 
progress of the war seemed again at a standstill 
discontent grew daily louder. The Democratic 
party nominated as its standard-bearer General 
McClellan, whose career with the Army of the 
Potomac had begun so brilliantly and ended so ill 
for the country. He had retired from the army 
and become a severe critic of the government and 
all its acts. He was nominated for President on a 
platform which demanded "that after four years 
of failure to restore the Union by the experiment 
of war . . . immediate efforts be made for a ces- 
sation of hostilities." This was of course a direct 
proposal to surrender to the Confederates, and 
though in his letter accepting the nomination Mc- 
Clellan coolly disregarded it and had much to say 
about his devotion to the Union, he took the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 219 

leadership of the party. There were other critics 
and other candidates. One small faction tried to 
array Grant himself against Mr. Lincoln and the 
administration and to nominate him for Presi- 
dent. The General paid no attention, and in his 
Memoirs does not even mention the incident. 
Previous to the war he had not been an ardent 
Lincoln man, but he had come to reverence the 
President's great qualities, and to feel that the 
cause of the country absolutely demanded his re- 
election. He knew that the action of his armies 
would influence the result, and that in this way he 
not only had the welfare of the armies, but the 
political future of the country in his keeping. It 
was a tremendous responsibility. He never 
despaired of the end. "He was as sure of victory 
as he was of dying," but to him as to others vic- 
tory seemed a weary while in coming. 



XI 

LIFE AT CITY POINT 

AGAINST the grim immensity of his war-mak- 
. ing— plans that embraced a continent, and 
responsibiHties that charged him with the welfare 
of millions of his fellow-men— the simplicity of 
his daily life went on. He was no longer the man 
who had cut cord-wood on the Gravois farm, or 
even the man who had won the brilliant victory at 
Donelson. He was maturer, older, and more 
thoughtful. His shoulders stooped, and the spare 
intensity in the lines on his face was a seal that 
had been set there by much power. But in habits 
of Hfe and of mind he was as simple and forgetful 
of self as he had ever been. 

At City Point he lived like his men, first in a 
tent, then when the camp became a town of small 
wooden houses, in a little building of two rooms, 
scarcely larger than those of his officers— the 
front room an office, the one behind it his sleeping- 
room, containing his camp bed, a very small 
trunk, which he sometimes forgot and left behind 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 221 

when on the march, a tin basin standing on an 
iron tripod, two folding- camp chairs, and a small 
pine table— the fewest possible comforts and not 
a single luxury. He was scrupulously careful 
about the cleanliness of his linen and of his per- 
son, even during an active campaign, but the 
condition of his outer garments gave him very 
little concern. His preference all through life 
was to have only one coat, and to wear that morn- 
ing, noon, and night, until it was retired from 
active duty in favor of a successor. During his 
campaign against Lee he wore a blouse like that 
of a private soldier, with nothing to indicate his 
rank except the shoulder-straps with their three 
gold stars of a lieutenant-general. In this matter 
of indifference to dress he resembled Mr. Lincoln. 
Both men were always suitably clad, and with due 
attention to custom, but it was a subject that did 
not interest them. The same may be said in re- 
gard to the pleasures of the table. They simply 
did not exist for either of them. Mr. Lincoln 
scarcely realized what he was eating, while Grant 
was the despair of the officers whose duty it was 
to cater for his table. They strove vainly to find 
something to tempt his appetite, and when he 
showed interest in a plate of oysters, or break- 
fasted with relish before going into battle on a 
cucumber and a cup of coffee, the occurrence was 



222 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

deemed of sufficient importance to be chronicled 
in history. 

There was absolutely no show or formality 
about his headquarters. His staff officers came 
and went as their duties permitted. All of them 
dined at table with their chief, and their conver- 
sation was as free and unrestrained as in a private 
family. Grant ate less and talked less than any of 
the others. His whole life had been a training in 
silence. As a child it had seemed that he must tell 
all he knew, or shut his lips so tight that nothing 
could escape. As a lad he had kept quiet for fear 
of ridicule. In the army the habit of unquestion- 
ing obedience to orders had been drilled into him. 
Before the war he lived in a town where people 
believed things that he felt were not true. He 
could not afford to quarrel with his neighbors, 
and the only course left to him was silence. After 
he reached a position of command the truth of the 
proverb about the word and the sword came to 
him with still greater force. "The unspoken 
word is a sword in the scabbard ; the spoken word 
a sword in the hands of one's enemy." If he did 
not tell what he meant to do, his plans could not 
become known to his adversaries. The line of 
his lips shut tighter still, and people called him 
Ulysses the Silent, and the American Sphinx. He 
had no small-talk with which to pad intervals of 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 223 

silence and make social encounters run smooth; 
and many a man carried away with him smarting 
memories of interviews where Grant sat grim 
and uncommunicative, and his interlocutor well- 
nigh dumb with cmharrassment. Yet in the pres- 
ence of a few friends he could talk well and with 
originality upon subjects to which he had given 
thought. It was, however, very hard to make him 
speak about matters personal to himself. His 
stafif officers used to slyly draw him out by mak- 
ing intentional misstatements about some occur- 
rence. Then his regard for truth would get the 
better of his reticence, and he would explain and 
correct them, and in so doing be led sometimes to 
talk with entire freedom on the desired subject. 

He was fond of good stories, and had a dry and 
somewhat biting humor of his own, but he would 
not tolerate stories suggestively broad or in any 
way indecent. "I see there are no ladies present," 
some one remarked as a preface to such a tale. 
"No, but there are gentlemen," was the quick 
and crushing rejoinder, leaving an electrically 
charged silence behind it. 

Swearing he never indulged in, even under the 
greatest provocation. "Somehow or other I 
never learned to swear," he answered when a 
friend asked how he had lived through the rough 
and tumble of army experience and frontier life 



224 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

without acquiring the habit. ''When a boy I 
seemed to have an aversion to it, and when I be- 
came a man I saw the folly of it. I have always 
noticed too that swearing helps to rouse a man's 
anger; and when a man flies into a passion his ad- 
versary who keeps cool always gets the better of 
him. In fact, I could never see the use of swear- 
ing. ... To say the least, it is a great waste of 
time." 

This remark of his is wondrous true and very 
characteristic. He never let passion get the better 
of his reason. Only two cases are recorded of his 
flying into a rage. One was when he came upon 
a private soldier insulting a woman, and promptly 
knocked the wretch down ; the other, when he saw 
a teamster violently strike the face of a horse. He 
was always kind and lenient toward the mistakes 
and temper of subordinate officers, if he thought 
they were loyal and capable. Occasionally, how- 
ever, their views roused him to vigorous com- 
ment. A general officer who came excitedly to 
Grant after the battle of the Wilderness got the 
full force of this. ''General Grant," he said, "this 
is a grave crisis. I know Lee's methods well. He 
will throw his whole army between us and the 
Rapidan, and cut us off completely from our com- 
munications." Grant rose to his feet, took the 
cigar out of his mouth, and answered with a spirit 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 225 

he seldom showed: "Oh, I am heartily tired of 
hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of 
you always seem to think he is suddenly going to 
turn a double somersault and land in our rear and 
on both our flanks at the same time. Go back to 
your command and try to think what we are going 
to do ourselves instead of what Lee is going to 
do." 

If Grant talked less than any officer on his staff, 
he probably smoked more. There is a tale of 
twenty large and strong cigars that he smoked in 
one day, during the battle of the Wilderness, but 
that was excessive, even for him. The way he 
acquired the habit is curious. He tried to learn to 
smoke at West Point, chiefly, as the other cadets 
did, because it was forbidden ; but he did not be- 
come addicted to the habit until after the taking 
of Fort Donelson. On the morning of that en- 
gagement he w^ent on board the flagship to confer 
with Admiral Foote, who was wounded. The 
Admiral offered him a cigar, which he smoked on 
his way back to his quarters. On the road he was 
met by news that the enemy was making a vigor- 
ous attack, and galloped forward at once, the 
forgotten cigar in his hand. It had gone out, but 
he continued to hold it between his fingers 
throughout the battle. The newspaper accounts 
of the engagement represented him as smoking 



226 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

during the height of the conflict, and many people, 
anxious to do something to please the new mili- 
tary hero, sent him boxes of their choicest cigars. 
It is said that ten thousand were received. He 
gave them away right and left, but having so 
many naturally smoked more than he would 
otherwise have done, and once begun, the habit 
continued to the end of his life. For convenience 
in lighting his cigars he carried with him in the 
field a small silver tinder-box in which were flint 
and steel with which to strike a spark, and a coil 
of fuse that could be ignited and not affected by 
the wind. This little habit of his seems to make 
him strangely remote. The days of flint and steel 
and the days of telegraphs are at first glance so 
far apart— yet he made constant use of both. 

An immense deal goes into good generalship 
besides fighting. There are interminable prob- 
lems of supplying large bodies of men with food 
and clothing and good spirits, of guarding against 
disease, difficulties of transportation to be over- 
come, the elements to be taken into account, and 
excessive cold or heat to be turned if possible into 
an advantage for one's own troops and a calamity 
to the enemy. The mere matter of horse-shoe 
nails is one detail in a thousand, yet a lack of them 
might seriously cripple an army. A commanding 
general cannot of course oversee all this per- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 227 

sonally, but his mind must be big^ enough— and 
charitable enough — to take account of all these 
dilYerent factors. Grant's training, both in and 
out of the army, had given him a sense of the re- 
quirements and necessities of the great army 
under him, and he was one of the few men hold- 
ing high rank who did not waste their time over 
tasks which belonged by rights to their subordi- 
nates. He realized that all merely routine matters 
could be attended to as well or better by some one 
else, and he left them in the hands of those whose 
duty it was to attend to them. He chose the best 
men he could find, and held them strictly account- 
able. His own time was kept for other matters. 
He would sit just inside his tent, or outside it near 
by, hour after hour, smoking very slowly, ap- 
parently the laziest man in the army, but when the 
time came, the well-matured plans that resulted 
from this thinking were swiftly translated into 
action. He had great powers of concentration. 
When thus engaged nothing that went on around 
him seemed to disturb him. Sometimes when his 
quarters were filled with officers talking and 
laughing, he would turn to his table and begin 
writing important despatches, li they stopped or 
made an attempt to keep silence, he bade them go 
on, and in time they came to understand that the 
noise really did not disturb him in the least. 



228 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

General Rawlins and Captain Parker, who, 
though a full-blooded Indian, wrote the best hand 
of any member of Grant's staff, helped him with 
his correspondence: For important letters and 
despatches, however, the General-in-chief seldom 
employed a secretary. He is said to have written 
as many as forty-two in a single day. He wrote 
swiftly and steadily, seldom pausing for a word, 
and very seldom making a change or an inter- 
lineation. He used short Anglo-Saxon words in 
preference to long ones derived from any tongue, 
and his one aim was to make his meaning clear. 
It was never necessary to read his orders over a 
second time to understand them. Yet he was not 
methodical. He could never find a paper that he 
had once put away, and his desk at headquarters 
was a whirlwind of disorder, in spite of the best 
efiforts of his mihtary secretaries. 

Because of his ability to withdraw his mind 
from the hubbub and confusion of his surround- 
ings, and also very likely because of his serene 
faith in final success, he was able to sleep under 
conditions that most people would have found im- 
possible — against a tree on a rain-soaked battle- 
field, or in his camp bed adjoining a tent full of 
officers talking and telling stories far into the 
night. There were times, however, when even his 
iron nerves were not proof against the demon of 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 229 

wakefulness — as on the night when the newspa- 
per reporter found him sitting hent over tlie camp- 
fire, or that other dreadful night after Shiloii, 
when the groans of the wounded drove him from 
the shelter of the improvised hospital back into 
the less trying storm. 

His family affections were very strong. He 
wrote to his wife with great frequency, and al- 
ways on the eve of battle. After he was estab- 
lished at City Point Mrs. Grant and the children 
came on from the West and made him several 
visits. His children were his pets and playmates. 
Fred, the eldest son, was quite a veteran. He had 
been with his father at the beginning of the war, 
and, when only thirteen, had, without the General 
knowing it, been under fire at Port Gibson — and 
after the engagement had rolled himself in a 
blanket and gone to sleep upon the field, where he 
was found some hours later by his astonished 
parent. He had also been his father's companion 
on the journey to Washington when Grant went 
to receive his commission as lieutenant-general. 

Headquarters at City Point were livelier for the 
presence of these youngsters. On the morning 
after their arrival an officer bringing in des- 
patches found the lieutenant-general in his shirt- 
sleeves, enjoying a wrestling match with the two 
eldest, and laughing as if he were a boy again. 

14 



230 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

They had just succeeded in tripping him, and he 
was on his knees on the floor, very red in the 
face. Seeing that business awaited him he disen- 
tangled himself with difficulty and rose, brushing 
the dust from his clothes, and saying in half 
apology: "You know my weaknesses — my chil- 
dren and my horses." 

The younger ones were privileged to hang 
about his neck when he was writing, and to turn 
everything within reach into a toy. But they 
were affectionate and obedient, and always re- 
spected their father's wish if he told them 
seriously what he wanted them to do. There was 
no lack of courage among them. Jesse, the 
youngest, a mere tot of six in Highland kilts, fol- 
lowed his father into action one day on his Shet- 
land pony "Little Reb," and remonstrated loudly 
when the junior aide was detailed to lead him 
back to safety. The aide was quite as much dis- 
tressed as the boy, for he too was very young, and 
he feared that all the troops who saw him gallop- 
ing toward the rear would think he was running 
away from the fight. 

Mrs. Grant was soon on the best of terms with 
the members of the staff, and won the liking of 
every one around her. She also was an old cam- 
paigner, having visited her husband several times 
during his command in the West, and knew per- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 231 

fectly how to adapt herself to army ways. She 
took her meals with the mess, visited the sick, 
soldiers and officers alike, conspired with the 
cooks in their behalf, and managed, against the 
black background of war, to make a home life for 
her General as wholesome and simple as the one 
they led together at Hardscrabble in the days 
when he battled against adverse circumstance, 
and his fight seemed to be a losing one. There 
was no time now for the reading aloud that had 
enlivened their dull evenings on the farm. He 
had despatches to receive and send concerning 
four great armies in the field, and orders to give 
that decided the coming and going of thousands 
of men. But for her there was no change, either 
in him or in herself. She had always known that 
he could do great things. Now other people were 
beginning to find it out. That was all. She still 
spoke of him as "Mr. Grant," from force of habit, 
and called him "Ulyss," when they were alone, or 
"Victor," a name she had coined for him after the 
fall of Vicksburg. 

Meantime the horrors of war did not cease,, 
though the terrible slaughter of the first six 
weeks of Grant's campaign against Richmond 
was at an end. War, as Mr. Lincoln once pointed 
out, cannot be profitably waged with "elder-stalk 
squirts charged with rose-water." Grant's meth- 



1-^2 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

ods had changed, but it was war as before, as re- 
lentless and as grim. 

One of the grimmest incidents was the ex- 
plosion of the mine at Petersburg, late in July. 
The colonel of a Pennsylvania regiment which 
was made up largely of miners, conceived the idea 
of using the skill of his men in their old profes- 
sion by preparing a mine large and powerful 
enough to blow up the parapets and make an 
opening for assaulting columns to rush through 
and capture the town. It was planned with great 
care, and carried to completion with every chance 
of success. The garrison of Petersburg learned 
what was going on, and countermined vainly to 
find the spot and check the digging. The whole 
town was in a panic, not knowing where or when 
or how much damage the explosion would cause. 
The attempt was timed for daybreak on the 30th 
of July, and Grant bivouacked near the center of 
the line to be upon the spot when the assault was 
made. Half-past three, the hour for the explo- 
sion, came — and went. The General-in-chief and 
his officers stood gazing intently in the direction 
of the mine. Orderlies with saddled horses 
waited near by. Not a word was spoken, not a 
sound heard. The silence was tense with expecta- 
tion, then with apprehension. Ten minutes 
passed by— twenty. Daylight was at hand, and 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 233 

the enemy must soon see the troops formed ready 
for the attack. An officer was sent to learn what 
had happened. He came back with the report 
that the fuse had been Hghted at the hour set. 
Another fifteen minutes passed, each second an 
eternity, for the success of the whole movement 
hung on that little spark. Grant waited, his right 
hand resting against a tree, his lips pressed close, 
his look one of profound anxiety. There was 
nothing to do except to wait. Then word came 
from the Pennsylvanians that they were not 
going to let the attempt fail. Two men had 
volunteered, in face of almost certain death, to 
enter the tunnel and find out the cause of the 
delay. They found that the fire had been inter- 
rupted at a point where two sections of the fuse 
were spliced. It was mended and relighted. 
There was a shock like an earthquake, a muffled 
roar, and a great cone-shaped volume of earth 
rose high into the air, tongues of flame playing 
through it like lightning through the clouds. For 
an instant it hung poised, then came down, a 
dreadful shower of rock, clay, timber, guns, and 
mutilated human bodies. It seemed as though the 
greater part of it would fall forward on the Union 
lines, and this caused some disorder, and a further 
slight delay. 

The crater made by the explosion was a jagged 



234 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

hole twenty or thirty feet deep, about fifty wide, 
and almost two hundred feet long, while the 
sides were so steep that once in, it was almost 
impossible to climb out again. The officer in 
charge of the actual assault proved unequal to 
the task. The troops went on without su- 
perior officers, and soon became confused. Some 
stopped to help wounded Confederates strug- 
gling out of the debris, some strove to scramble 
up the steep sides of the crater. It was soon 
filled with disorganized men, while shouting and 
screaming, the tearing of shells and the roar 
of artillery, made it a veritable pandemonium. 
More men were struggling toward it, and the 
Confederates were rallying to the defense on 
the other side. Grant, quick to see that things 
were not going as they should, cried, "Come 
with me!" to an officer standing near him, 
and the two galloped forward followed by a 
single orderly. Soon they had to give up their 
horses and make their way on foot. Grant's ob- 
ject was to find the corps commander, and 
through him, if possible, to bring order out of 
this chaos. Save for his shoulder-straps he was 
dressed like a private soldier, and few recognized 
him as he elbowed his way energetically to the 
front. The shots fell thick and fast, and to save 
time Grant, seeing he could move more quickly 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 235 

on that side, climbed to the outside of the Union 
earthworks, and took his chances unsheltered, the 
officer following, sick with apprehension. The 
astonishment of the corps commander can be 
imagined when his chief appeared from that di- 
rection, horseless, breathless, black with dust and 
perspiration. Grant wasted no time in explana- 
tion or greeting. He had seen that the entire 
opportunity was lost, and ordered the troops im- 
mediately withdrawn. "It was slaughter to leave 
them there," he said. Then he was gone again, 
making his way back with no little difficulty to the 
spot where the horses had been left. It is to be 
doubted whether he had a right thus to expose 
himself. The order to withdraw could certainly 
have been sent by some one else; but when he 
started it was not that order that he hoped to 
give, and blood will tingle and hearts beat fast in 
sympathy with a commander who so forgot his 
own safety, and even his own duty, in an effort to 
right a hopeless blunder. It was two hours past 
midday before the last survivors were withdrawn. 
Grant and his staff rode sadly back to headquar- 
ters. He had few words of blame for those whose 
failure had brought the enterprise to ruin, only 
remarking that such an opportunity for carrying 
a fortified line he had never seen, and never ex- 
pected to see again. 



236 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

The taking of Richmond being the central act 
in the miHtary drama, and the other armies and 
commanders appearing to be accomphshing noth- 
ing, all eyes turned toward Grant, who was in the 
habit of doing things. Yet his army also seemed 
to be at a standstill, and the siege stretched 
through interminable weeks. The political situa- 
tion grew daily more gloomy, until it reached a 
point where even President Lincoln thought the 
elections would go against him. And if he, with 
his wide knowledge, felt so, it is no wonder that 
people in a position to know only what their 
limited vision disclosed should have been almost 
in despair. Criticisms abounded, advice came to 
Grant in full measure quite unasked, and all the 
cranks in the country turned their genius toward 
helping him solve the problem of victory. One 
plan, accompanied by elaborate drawings, was for 
a great wall to be built around Richmond, taller 
than its tallest houses, after which water might 
be pumped in from the James river and the garri- 
son drowned out like rats. Another contemplated 
shells filled with an all-powerful snufif, which 
when exploded over the city in sufficient quanti- 
ties was warranted to reduce the inhabitants to 
helplessness, and allow the Union army to walk 
in unopposed. A third, based on weather statis- 
tics, averred that the following winter was sure 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 237 

to see the James river frozen over, when, with all 
in readiness beforehand, columns of troops could 
be rushed across the ice to a position in the rear of 
the enemy's lines, and Richmond be at their 
mercy. All these visionary schemes were wasted 
on Grant's practical mind. "This is a very sug- 
gestive age," he remarked. "Some people think 
that an army can be whipped by waiting for rivers 
to freeze over, or by setting troops to sneezing; 
but it will always be found in the end that the only 
way to whip an enemy is to go out and fight him." 

Then the country woke up to the fact that in 
spite of their seeming inactivity, this was just 
what the various Union armies were doing. Sher- 
man, victorious in his campaign in Georgia, 
entered Atlanta on the 2d of September, and 
began preparations for his wonderful march to 
the sea. General Sheridan, sent to clear the 
Shenandoah Valley of Confederate cavalry, made 
his famous "ride" that reads like a chapter of 
romance, and sent the enemy "whirling through 
Winchester"; and in November, the country, 
responding to these and other successes, roused 
from its despondency, and reelected President 
Lincoln by a majority that showed the people's 
trust in his guidance, and in Grant's firm 
strength. 

Of Grant's share in the nation's confidence 



238 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

there was no doubt. About this time he made a 
hurried trip north to see his children who were in 
school, stopping on his way back for a quiet day 
or two in New York and another in Philadelphia. 
But the days were not quiet. Crowds thronged 
about his hotel, and when he appeared on the 
streets he was almost mobbed by enthusiastic 
strangers. He took it quietly, as was his nature, 
and with good humor, as was his wont, but his 
astonishment was great that people should be so 
anxious to look at him. 

The military successes of his friends made him 
very happy. He read aloud Sheridan's despatch, 
which began with a tale of reverses and ended in 
victory, with a solemn voice and pretense of deep 
chagrin, rejoicing with twinkling eyes over the 
joke he was playing on his stafif officers ; and Sher- 
man's triumphs were as welcome to him as if they 
had been his own. 

On November i6th, that general, having sent 
back his sick and his surplus stores to Chat- 
tanooga, burned the railroad bridges, tore up the 
tracks, destroyed the vast array of mills and fac- 
tories that made Atlanta of supreme importance 
to the South, and started with 60,000 of his best 
men on his march of 300 miles to the Atlantic 
Ocean, as gaily as if they were entering on a 
holiday. Such indeed it proved in comparison 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 239 

with the canipai,c;'ns these sturdy veterans had al- 
ready iindcrf^one. On December 15th and i6th 
General Thomas defeated General Hood in Ten- 
nessee. On December 22d Sherman telegraphed 
to the President, "I beg to present to you as a 
Christmas gift the city of Savannah" ; and slowly 
but steadily Grant's sinister lines were stretching 
westward, menacing the roads that brought food 
and supplies into Richmond. The southern cause 
was in its last throes. 

On January 30, 1865, a letter was brought to 
General Grant which had been sent into the Union 
lines from Petersburg the night before. It was 
signed by three persons high in Confederate cir- 
cles, Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of 
the Confederacy, J. A. Campbell, Assistant Secre- 
tary of War, and R. M. T. Hunter, Senator and 
Ex-secretary of State. They requested permission 
to enter Grant's lines, saying they were a "Peace 
Commission" seeking an interview with President 
Lincoln. They were admitted and treated as 
guests at City Point while President Lincoln sent 
Secretary of State Seward down from Washing- 
ton to Hampton Roads to meet them. Grant him- 
self conducted them to the headquarters boat 
where they were given state-rooms. They were 
amazed at the simplicity of his dress and manners, 
and the lack of military display in the bare little 



240 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

office room where they found him writing by the 
light of a kerosene lamp. "The more I became 
acquainted with him," wrote one of them, "the 
more I became thoroughly impressed with the 
very extraordinary combination of rare elements 
in the character which he exhibited. During the 
time he met us frequently and conversed freely 
upon various subjects. Not much upon our mis- 
sion. I saw however, very clearly, that he was 
very anxious for the proposed conference to take 
place." 

It came to nothing. The commissioners had 
not been quite frank in their application to enter 
the Union lines. It was found that they were 
empowered only to treat for the peace of the "two 
countries." The North had never admitted that 
there were two countries, and could entertain no 
such proposition, although it was more than will- 
ing to enter into negotiations looking to the peace 
of "our one common country." So, though at 
Grant's request President Lincoln himself went to 
Hampton Roads and had a long informal talk 
with these gentlemen, their mission was from the 
first doomed to failure, and resulted only in show- 
ing once more the President's great patience, and 
in confirming the suspicions of the government at 
Washington that Richmond was in extremity and 
must soon surrender. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 241 

This was indeed the case. The Confederacy 
was at the end of its resources. In Richmond 
flour cost a thousand dollars a barrel in Con- 
federate money, and there was little of it to be 
had, even at that price. The slaves, for whose 
bondage the struggle had been begun, were of no 
value at all. The war had defeated its own pur- 
pose and brought about the very thing that eman- 
cipation accomplished in the North. It was vain 
for Jefferson Davis to issue proclamations to "fire 
the southern heart." The heart of the South was 
already chilled and numb with the certainty that 
his government was a failure. But as faith in the 
Confederate President went down, faith in Rob- 
ert E. Lee, their brilliant general, rose to the 
flood. The southern people felt him to be their 
one and only hope. On the evening of March 3d, 
about a month after the fruitless Hampton 
Roads conference, Grant received a letter directly 
from him, proposing a meeting between the two 
commanders, with a view "to a satisfactory ad- 
justment of the present unhappy difficulties by 
means of a military convention." Lee was so 
strong in the confidence of the South that it is 
likely he could have secured the popular assent to 
any measure he proposed. It is perhaps not strange 
that he supposed Grant to hold a similar position 
in regard to the North. Grant saw that it was not 



242 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

a military but a political move that the Confed- 
erate general was making, and telegraphed the 
proposal to Washington. _ The answer came back, 
clear and decided : 

The President directs me to say that he wishes you 
to have no conference with General Lee unless it be 
for capitulation of General Lee's army, or on some 
minor or purely military matter. He instructs me to 
say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon 
any political questions. Such questions the President 
holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no 
military conferences or conventions. Meanwhile, you 
are to press to the utmost your military advantages. ' 



The time for compromises was past. The game 
must be played out to the end. 

General Longstreet of the Confederate army is 
authority for the statement that this proposed 
meeting between Grant and Lee was but the be- 
ginning of a fanciful plan for bringing about 
peace; a further step being an interchange of vis- 
its between Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Longstreet, who 
were old friends. It was hoped that when one of 
these ladies appeared at City Point and the other 
in Richmond, the chivalry of the soldiers would 
assure such enthusiastic greetings as to rouse 
universal good will, and that this in turn would 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 243 

lead to more substantial results. Mrs. Lon£2^street 
was summoned to Richmond by telegraph, but the 
airy fabric was pierced by Grant's very proper 
and eminently sensible course in transmitting 
Lee's proposal to Washington. 

Toward the latter part of March the President 
went down to City Point to visit General Grant 
and his son Captain Robert Lincoln, who was a 
member of Grant's staff. He was one of the most 
welcome and satisfactory of the many visitors 
who came and went at the camp of the'Lieutenant- 
General. Mr. Lincoln greatly enjoyed these little 
outings, which took him away for a time from the 
many perplexing details of life at the White 
House. These two greatest men of their country 
and generation were as different as possible, yet 
had much in common. They were plain, kind, 
practical men, both of them, terribly in earnest 
about their business of putting down the rebellion, 
but not in the least concerned about themselves. 
There was sympathy and trust between them 
from the first. "The President," said Grant, "is 
one of the few visitors I have had who has not 
attempted to extract from me a knowledge of my 
movements, although he is the only one who has 
a right to know" ; and in the little things of life— 
the dislike of the "show business" that Grant had 
given as his excuse for refusing the President's 



244 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

first invitation to dinner, their shrinking from 
seeing or inflicting pain, their lack of interest in 
"sport," their fondness for children, and many 
other traits— they were in full sympathy. 



XII 

A GENEROUS FOE 

**/^NE of the most anxious periods of my ex- 
\^ perience during the rebellion," says Grant, 
''was the last few weeks before Petersburg. 
I felt that the situation of the Confederate army 
was such that they would try to make an escape at 
the earliest practicable moment, and I was afraid 
every morning that I would awake from my sleep 
to hear that Lee had gone, and that nothing was 
left but a picket line." 

Lee still controlled one line of railroad running 
south, and Grant feared that he might be secretly 
moving men and stores out of harm's way. In 
that case the Army of the Potomac would have 
the same wary enemy to fight farther south, and 
the war might drag on for another year. "I was 
led to this fear by the fact that I could not see 
how it was possible for the Confederates to hold 
out much longer where they were. There is no 
doubt that Richmond would have been evacuated 
much sooner than it was, if it had not been that it 
was the capital of the so-called Confederacy." 



15 



24s 



246 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

The loss of their capital would of course be 
very demoralizing to the army as well as to the 
southern people, and both Lee and President 
Davis were anxious to delay it as long as pos- 
sible ; but Lee, at least, saw that it must soon come. 
Conscription laws had been passed, making old 
men and boys of fourteen liable to military duty. 
Squads of guards were sent into the streets of 
Richmond with orders to arrest every able-bodied 
man they met. Even the sick were not excused if 
they had strength to bear arms for the space of 
ten days. This was more than flesh and blood 
could endure, and desertions were taking place 
from the southern armies at the rate of a regiment 
a day. Grant knew this, and also that they could 
get no new men to replace them. It was only a 
question of mathematics how long they could hold 
out. Grant knew too that Lee's army was not 
only losing numbers but courage. 

The situation seemed thoroughly within his 
grasp, and he was impatient to begin the move- 
ment which he was confident would end the war. 
Sherman had turned northward after his trium- 
phant march to the sea, and would soon be in 
touch with General Meade's army, but Grant felt 
that the honor of defeating Lee and capturing 
the Confederate capital ought to belong alone to 
the Army of the Potomac, which had confronted 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 247 

him and it for so long. Only two considerations 
held him back. The winter had been one of heavy 
rains, and it was necessary to wait for the roads 
to be dry enough to move artillery and supply- 
trains. Also, he must await the arrival of 
Sheridan's cavalry, now returning from its final 
expedition to the Shenandoah Valley. 

Lee meantime visited Richmond to confer with 
President Davis on the measures to be adopted in 
the crisis which he saw approaching. They agreed 
that sooner or later Richmond must be abandoned, 
and that the next move should be to Danville, 
Virginia, near the North Carolina border. 

Before turning his back forever on the capital 
he had so stoutly defended, he determined to make 
one more dash at Grant's lines. Grant, foresee- 
ing the possibility of some such move, warned his 
generals to be on the alert, and to bring every 
resource to bear on the point in danger, adding, 
"With proper alacrity in this respect, I would 
have no objection to seeing the enemy get 
through"— a characteristic comment that throws 
a flood of light on Grant's habit of mind, and the 
mastery he had by this time attained in his profes- 
sion. Under such generalship an enemy's lines 
are a trap, and entrance into them is suicide. 

The assault was made with great spirit at Fort 
Stedman opposite the Petersburg defenses in the 



248 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

early morning of March 25th. It succeeded at 
first owing to the fact that the Confederate skir- 
mishers, steaUng through the darkness, were mis- 
taken for an unusually large party of deserters, 
and overpowered several picket-posts without 
firing a shot. The storming party, following with 
a rush, gained possession of the fort, but with the 
growing light Union troops advanced from all 
sides and made short work of the intruders. That 
this mere incident of the siege, hardly large 
enough to be called a battle, resulted in a loss to 
Lee of about 4000 troops, and of half that number 
to Grant, shows what mighty proportions the 
struggle had taken on. 

The day before this happened Grant had issued 
his orders for a grand movement to the left, to 
begin on the 29th. The sally at Fort Stedman 
convinced him that this was not a moment too 
soon, but Sheridan's cavalry, which had just ar- 
rived, must rest and be re-shod, and it was deter- 
mined to keep to the original date. Sheridan was 
given his instructions and read them with deep 
disappointment. They provided that under cer- 
tain circumstances he was to cut loose from the 
Army of the Potomac and take his cavalry down 
into North Carolina to join General Sherman. 
The commanding general, seeing his chagrin, rose 
and followed him out of earshot of even the staff 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 249 

officers, and then explained that this was merely a 
blind. He fully expected to end the war there and 
then, and not to have Sheridan go beyond his im- 
mediate neighborhood, but the North was restless, 
and many believed that an end of fighting could 
only be brought about by compromise. If they 
knew his real plan, and any part of it miscarried, 
it would be looked upon as a disastrous defeat. He 
therefore preferred that they should not know. In 
case things did not go as he hoped, Sheridan could 
join Sherman, help him to beat Johnston, and then 
the two, coming north again, could assist Grant in 
carrying out his original plan. Thus Grant pro- 
vided for public opinion as well as for victory, and 
Sheridan went away content. On the 27th Gen- 
eral Sherman came up from North Carolina for a 
brief visit, and an interesting meeting took place 
between the President who was still at City Point, 
and the three famous brothers in arms; Grant 
meanwhile continuing his preparations with even 
more than his customary vigor. The army was 
jubilant, for every one, down to the smallest 
drummer-boy, felt that the end was at last at 
hand. 

On the morning of the 29th Mr. Lincoln came 
ashore from his boat, the River Queen, to bid 
good-by to Grant and his stafif, who were to make 
the first few miles of their journey by rail. Mrs. 



250 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Grant was to remain at City Point, and the Presi- 
dent and Mrs. Lincoln were also to stay there 
some days longer before returning to Wash- 
ington. 

General Grant's parting with his wife was more 
than usually affectionate as she stood at the door 
of his quarters, calm and pale, her sorrowful 
looks showing what was in her heart. Then Mr. 
Lincoln walked with the party to the railroad sta- 
tion only a short distance away. He also was 
serious. He had chatted gaily enough at head- 
quarters, telling stories and striving to cheer the 
parting between the General and his wife, but now 
the lines in his face were as if chiseled, and his 
deeply shadowed eyes seemed to sink back into 
ineffable sadness. It was plain that the moment 
with its responsibility and its uncertainty op- 
pressed him. As the officers mounted the train he 
gave the General and each member of the staff a 
cordial clasp of the hand. The little group on the 
rear platform raised their hats respectfully; the 
President returned the salute, and in a voice 
broken with emotion bade them God-speed. A 
signal was given. Grant's last campaign had be- 
gun, and as the cars bore the officers away, the 
tall President, left almost alone upon the plat- 
form, stood looking after them, hat in hand. 

As they went on Grant's plan developed from 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 253 

hour to hour. "1 now feel hke ending the matter 
, . . before going back," he wrote Sheridan. 
"We will act all together as one army here, until 
it is seen what can be done with the enemy." A 
depressing storm of rain set in and reduced the 
roads again to a liquid in which horses floundered 
and wagons refused to move. This put a damper 
on the enthusiasm of the troops which had been 
at white heat the day before, but Grant's quiet 
confidence and Sheridan's irrepressible courage 
swept everything before them. Sheridan moved 
to Five Forks, a junction of five roads a little 
southwest of Petersburg, that both Grant and 
Lee recognized as a strategic point of great im- 
portance. Here he found a strong force of the 
enemy. On the 31st there was a battle in which 
Sheridan was pressed back as far as Dinwiddie 
Court-house ; but an officer, despatched by Grant 
to see how things were going with him, found the 
little general stout of heart, and the band of his 
slowly retreating rear-guard playing "Nelly Bly" 
as cheerfully as if furnishing music for a country 
picnic. He always made fine use of his bands. 
Some of the instruments might be pierced by 
bullets and his drums the worse for contact with 
shells, but the spirit of the performance was all 
that could be desired. Sheridan confessed that he 
had had one of the liveliest days in his experience, 



254 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

but declared that the enemy was in more danger 
than he. He might be cut off from the Army of 
the Potomac, but his opponent was cut off from 
Lee's army, and not a man ought to be allowed to 
get back to it. The intrepid cavalry leader vowed 
he was able to hold the spot where he then stood, 
and by morning could again take the offensive. 

Grant, much more alarmed for Sheridan's 
safety than Sheridan was for himself, spent the 
night raining orders and suggestions on his 
various commanders for a concentration of 
troops to go to his assistance ; but the Confederate 
General Pickett, his immediate opponent, finding 
himself out of position, silently withdrew during 
the night into his intrenchments at Five Forks, 
whither Sheridan, true to his promise, followed 
him next day, a very incarnation of battle, charg- 
ing through the thick of the fight on his coal-black 
horse "Rienzi," exhorting, ordering, encouraging 
— hypnotizing even the mortally wounded into 
renewed life, and repeating the tactics of his 
Shenandoah Valley exploits so brilliantly that the 
right of Lee's army was entirely shattered. 

This battle of Five Forks on April ist should 
have ended the war. After it there was no longer 
any hope of saving Richmond. But Lee seemed 
to feel that even a temporary delay was worth all 
the lives it cost. Grant ordered an assault for 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 255 

the morning of the 2d aU along the hnes. The 
answers came with electric confidence. General 
Wright said that he would "make the fur fly"; 
General Ord, that he would go into the Confeder- 
ate lines "like a hot knife into butter." It is dis- 
tressing to record the hard fighting that followed, 
for the contest was already decided, and all this 
heroic blood was shed needlessly. The Con- 
federates fell slowly back to their inner line of 
defenses, and Lee, watching the formidable ad- 
vance before which his troops gave way, sent a 
telegram to Richmond, announcing that the time 
had come to give up the town. 

It was Sunday, and Jefiferson Davis received 
the fateful message in church. "My lines are 
broken in three places. Richmond must be 
evacuated this evening," he read, and rose quietly 
and left the church. As speedily as possible the 
rector brought the services to a close, and made 
the announcement that General Ewell desired the 
military forces to assemble at three o'clock that 
afternoon. Soon the Sabbath quiet gave way to 
hurried activity. Davis called his cabinet to- 
gether, and the packing of the Confederate papers 
and archives began. Banks were opened and 
depositors flocked to them to withdraw what little 
remained of their money and valuables. A rem- 
nant of the Virginia legislature gathered at the 



256 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Capitol, and later departed with the governor on 
a canal-boat for Lynchburg. Citizens who had 
means of escape made hasty preparation for 
flight, and the streets were filled with hurrying 
teams. In the slave-traders' jail, sixty people- 
men, women, and children— were hastily chained 
together, and made ready to be taken south— the 
last slave coffie that ever trod the streets of Rich- 
mond. But the departing trains were already 
over-full, and this slave gang went to pieces, as 
did every other organization in Richmond, mili- 
tary or political. 

Some Confederate writers have expressed sur- 
prise that General Grant did not attack and de- 
stroy Lee's army on the afternoon of the 2d of 
April. One of Grant's wise words, written, not 
of this, but of criticism in general, is : "My later 
experience has taught me two lessons. First, that 
things are seen plainer after the events have oc- 
curred. Second, that the most confident critics 
are generally those who know the least about the 
matter criticized." The men on the Union left 
had been on foot eighteen hours ; they had fought 
an important battle, and marched and counter- 
marched many miles. Grant, anticipating an 
early retirement by Lee from his citadel, wisely 
resolved to avoid the waste and bloodshed of an 
immediate assault on the inner lines of defense at 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 257 

Petersburg. He ordered General Sheridan to get 
upon Lee's line of retreat; sent General Hum- 
phreys to strengthen him ; ordered a general bom- 
bardment for five o'clock the next morning, with 
an assault at six, and gave himself and his soldiers 
a few hours of the rest they had so richly earned 
—and needed, to prepare them for the labors to 
come. 

Next morning Meade and Grant entered 
Petersburg together, so closely on the heels of the 
flying Confederates that they could see the streets 
near the bridge packed with gray-coated soldiers. 
Grant had not the heart to turn his artillery on 
such a mass of defeated men, and let them pass 
out of the town, convinced that Lee's speedy sur- 
render would deliver them into his hand. His 
soldiers went on in pursuit of the enemy, and 
Petersburg, deserted by both sides, seemed like a 
city given over to the dead. Not even an animal 
was to be seen on the streets. Only Grant and his 
officers waited on the piazza of an empty house 
for Mr. Lincoln, who rode over from City Point 
to join them. Like Grant, he was delighted at the 
large number of prisoners taken. Grant's des- 
patch of the previous day, "the whole captures 
since the army started out gunning will not 
amount to less than 12,000 men," had filled him 
with a satisfaction equal to Grant's own; and 



258 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Grant's first question after an engagement was 
always, "How many prisoners?" knowing that 
such captures reduced the enemy's forces without 
inflicting suffering on either side. After thank- 
ing him and his army most warmly for their vic- 
tory, and talking a little while about what was yet 
to be accomplished, the President remounted his 
horse and rode back to City Point, and Grant and 
his officers started on to join the army which was 
already far in advance. 

Word came from General Weitzel that he had 
entered Richmond on the morning of the 3d to 
find it in flames. It had indeed been given over 
by the Confederates to every sort of wanton 
destruction. But this was no time to turn aside 
for captured capitals. Grant left General Weitzel 
and his soldiers, white and black, to put out the 
fire and restore order as seemed to them wise. 
"Lee's army will be your objective point. Where 
Lee goes, there you will go also," he had in- 
structed General Meade at the outset of the cam- 
paign a year ago. "Where Lee goes, there I go 
also," was his thought now that the end was at 
hand. 

Flight and pursuit had begun almost at the 
same moment. Lee was bending every energy to 
get his army safely away to join General Johns- 
ton in North Carolina. The first rendezvous for 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 259 

his fleeing troops was Amelia Court-house, where 
he had (hrected suppHes to be sent. When all 
preparations for abandoning Richmond were 
completed he had ridden out of town at nightfall, 
and dismounting, had stood, bridle in hand, 
watching his troops file noiselessly by in the 
darkness. 

All day of the 3d he and his men pushed for- 
ward. He seemed in higher spirits than usual. 
"I have got my army safe out of its breastworks," 
he said, "and in order to follow me the enemy 
must abandon his lines and can derive no further 
benefit from his railroads or the James river." 
Such spirit was admirable, but he was dealing 
with a man who cared nothing for lines— who in 
Mississippi had swung clear of all such hamper- 
ing restraints, had faced an army equal to his 
own, and had won a victory a day in a hostile 
country, without even a wagon-train. 

When Lee and his half-famished men reached 
Amelia Court-house on the 4th they found that 
no food had been sent to meet them. It was a 
terrible disappointment, and twenty-four hours 
were lost in collecting subsistence for men and 
horses. This delay proved fatal. By the time 
they started again the whole pursuing force was 
to the south and stretching out to the west of 
them, and Lee was compelled to change his route. 



26o THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

He started for Lynchburg, which he was destined 
never to reach. 

Sheridan, in advance, learned of his change of 
plan, and fearful that some mistake might be 
made, and Lee manage to escape after all, sent 
Grant a despatch describing the situation, and 
adding, 'T wish you were here yourself." Grant, 
who had been riding with General Ord's com- 
mand ten miles to the left, was about to go into 
camp after a hard day in the saddle when a man 
in Confederate uniform emerged suddenly from 
the woods at the side of the road. He was sur- 
rounded in an instant, but proved to be Sheridan's 
scout, and not an indiscreet southerner. Taking 
a tin-foil pellet from his mouth he opened it and 
produced the despatch. Grant gave it one glance, 
and calling for a fresh horse, bade him lead the 
way. He would not even wait for a cup of coffee. 
If Sheridan thought there was need of him at 
that point, there he would go. Followed by four 
officers and an escort of only fourteen men they 
rode through the gathering darkness, then 
through the moonlight, in a country perilously 
near the enemy's lines. They saw rebel camp- 
fires gleaming, and signs that cavalry had passed 
that way. One of the officers cocked his pistol 
and prepared to make short work of the scout if 
he were leading their chief into hidden danger. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 261 

But he was one of Sheridan's most trusted men, 
and brought them in time to his pickets. These 
could scarcely believe that the Lieutenant-Gen- 
eral was roaming about the country at that hour 
with so small an escort, and the parley was 
spirited before they would let him pass. The 
troops were sleeping on their arms. As the little 
party picked its way among them, they woke up 
and recognized Grant in the moonlight. "Great 
Scott!" they said, and fell to speculating as to 
what would happen on the morrow. Sheridan 
was expecting him. After talking the situation 
over Grant went on to General Meade's camp 
near by. He was sick, but full of soldierly en- 
thusiasm, and readily agreed to all the changes 
Grant suggested in his plans for the following 
day. 

It rained, and there were scant rations, but the 
troops, forgetting all weariness, swept on in fine 
form. The friendly rivalry between infantry and 
cavalry found voice in sly remarks as the General 
rode beside the columns of marching men. "Cav- 
alry 's gi'n out, General. Infantry 's goin' to 
crush the rest of the mud" ; and, "We 've marched 
twenty miles on this stretch, and we 're good for 
twenty more if the General says so. We 're not 
straddlin' any horses, but we '11 get there all the 
same." The General raised his hat in acknowl- 



262 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

edgment of the cheers, and had a pleasant nod for 
each of the men who addressed him. That night 
headquarters was at a Httle country hotel in the 
village of Farmville, south of the Appomattox 
river. The troops spied their general, sitting on 
the dark piazza, watching them with evident pride 
as they swung past. Cheers rose from throats 
already hoarse, bonfires were lighted on the sides 
of the street, the men improvised torches out of 
straw and pine knots, and the scene changed in an 
instant to an ovation and a review, with a quiet, 
silent man, clad like themselves, as the central 
figure. 

Pursuit and flight continued all through the 
6th, the Confederates halting and partially in- 
trenching, and the national forces driving them 
out of every position. By nightfall Lee's army 
could no longer hope to escape. Sheridan, ap- 
preciating to the full the day's work, telegraphed 
to Grant : *'If the thing is pressed, I think that Lee 
will surrender." Grant sent the despatch on to 
President Lincoln, who instantly replied, "Let the 
thing be pressed." 

On the 7th Lee's officers made known to him 
their belief that resistance was useless, and ad- 
vised him to surrender. He answered that they 
had too many bold men to think of laying down 
their arms. He seemed to fear that if he made the 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 263 

first overtures Grant would demand an uncon- 
ditional surrender. Grant had no wish to drive a 
gallant antagonist to extremes. That evening he 
sent Lee a note saying that the results of the past 
week must have convinced him of the hopelessness 
of further resistance, and that he regarded it as 
his duty, in order "to shift from myself the re- 
sponsibility of any further effusion of blood," to 
ask him to surrender the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia. He slept that night in a room said to have 
been occupied by Lee only a few hours before. 
Lee's answer, which reached him before morning, 
was not, to Grant's mind, "satisfactory," but it 
asked what terms Grant would be willing to allow. 
Grant replied that, peace being his great desire, 
he would only insist upon one condition, namely, 
that the men and officers surrendered should not 
take up arms against the United States until prop- 
erly exchanged ; and he offered to meet Lee, or to 
send officers to meet any officers Lee might name, 
to conclude the terms. 

The remnant of the Confederate army mean- 
while stole away in the night, on the desperate 
chance of finding food at Appomattox, and a way 
of escape to Lynchburg; and again there was a 
day of flight and pursuit, this time through a part 
of Virginia not yet wasted by the passage of 
hostile armies. Through the young green of 

16 



264 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

spring the two armies marched — the Confeder- 
ates in dogged apathetic obedience, all that is left 
to brave men when hope is gone; the soldiers of 
Grant inspired to forgetfulness of fatigue by the 
certainty of victory. 

On the evening of the 8th Sheridan by great 
exertions succeeded in planting himself squarely 
across Lee's line of retreat. This was near sun- 
set. He had only his cavalry, and Lee's whole 
army was coming up the road, but he held his 
ground, and by morning the infantry was there 
to support him. The Confederates, thinking they 
had only his horse to contend with, advanced to 
the attack. The Union cavalry, obedient to or- 
ders, fell slowly back, and disclosed to their 
amazed opponents road and hills and valley cov- 
ered with serried lines of blue-coated men. 

Lee awoke suddenly to a realization of the 
truth. He had answered Grant on the day before, 
refusing to surrender but proposing a meeting to 
negotiate generally on "the restoration of peace." 
Grant, too wary to be trapped into any political 
discussion, had answered in a despatch of perfect 
courtesy but equal frankness, saying that such a 
meeting could do no good, and had set out to join 
Sheridan, who was barring Lee's last way of 
escape. He was sick, physically and mentally — 
sick with the futility of his correspondence with 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 265 

Lee ; sick with the exertions and anxieties of these 
last hard days of marching and battle. A severe 
headache had deprived him of all rest the night 
before. He mounted his horse and rode on toward 
Sheridan, suffering excruciating pain; but when 
a messenger came to him bearing a letter from 
Lee asking an interview ''in accordance with the 
offer contained in your letter of yesterday," the 
pain disappeared as if by magic. The army de- 
murred, believing it to be a ruse. They begged to 
be allowed to go in and whip the enemy, which 
they knew they could do in five minutes, but 
Grant of course would not hear of anything so 
brutal. 

It will be remembered that in his note of the 
8th he had offered to meet Lee in person, or to 
send officers to meet any officers Lee might name. 
This was an act of courtesy meant to spare Lee 
the mortification of personally conducting the sur- 
render of his army. Washington had been equally 
courteous to Cornwallis at Yorktown, and Corn- 
wallis accepted the opportunity, and sent General 
O'Hara in his stead. Lee scorned to make a cloak 
of any such subterfuge, and came himself in 
manly fashion to give up his sword. 

The two generals met at the house of Air. Mc- 
Lean at Appomattox Court-house, on Sunday, 
April 9, 1865, ^t about half after one o'clock. 



266 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Lee was already there when Grant arrived. Grant 
had known him very sHghtly in Mexico, where 
the Virginian served as General Scott's chief 
of staff. He was a large, austere man, of great 
dignity and handsome presence, several years 
Grant's senior, and for this occasion had donned 
his newest uniform and finest sword, while Grant, 
who had not seen his personal belongings since his 
night ride to Sheridan's camp, was in the costume 
he had worn all through the campaign, the sol- 
dier's blouse, with the shoulder-straps of his rank. 
His top-boots were spattered with mud. He had 
not even a sword, for he rarely wore one when 
riding. His hands were encased in the mysterious 
yellow-brown gloves, though he quickly removed 
these on entering the room. His hat was of the 
kind known as "sugar-loaf," with a stiff brim. 

General Lee, gray of hair, gray of beard, gray 
of uniform, dignified, elegant, and courtly, as im- 
maculate as though just dressed for church, or for 
parade, advanced to meet his brown-bearded, 
unmilitary-looking conqueror. The little group 
of officers who accompanied Grant held back, 
thinking the meeting would perhaps be easier in 
private, but Grant soon made it known that he 
wished their presence, and they filed in and 
ranged themselves around the sides of the room, 
"very much," says one of his staff, "as people 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 267 

enter a sick chamber when they expect to find the 
patient dangerously ill." 

Grant had been jubilant on receipt of Lee's let- 
ter, but now in the presence of his enemy he was 
sad and depressed. Striving to make Lee feel at 
ease he talked about the old army, and of Mexico. 
His desire to inflict as little humiliation as pos- 
sible on a brave adversary was so marked that one 
of the subordinates whispered under his breath, 
''Who is surrendering here, anyhow?" 

Whatever Lee may have felt, his face betrayed 
no sign. It was he who brought the conversation 
to the business before them by a request for the 
terms on which the surrender of his army would 
be received. Grant briefly stated them, Lee ac- 
cepted them, and the talk drifted again to other 
matters, to be once more brought back by Lee 
with the suggestion that the terms be set down in 
writing. In his Memoirs Grant states that when 
he put his pen to the paper he had not given a 
thought to the words he should use. The terms 
he had verbally proposed and Lee accepted were 
soon in writing. There he might have stopped, 
but a glance at Lee's jeweled sword suggested a 
paragraph allowing officers to retain their side- 
arms and private property ; and his sympathy for a 
brave foe increasing as he wrote, he closed with 
the assurance that ''each officer and man will be 



268 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

allowed to return to their homes, not to be dis- 
turbed by United States authority so long as they 
observe their parole and the laws in force where 
they may reside"— thus practically pardoning 
every man in Lee's army, a thing he had refused 
to do the day before, and which had been ex- 
pressly forbidden by Lincoln's order of March 
3d. But the gratitude of the government and 
the people was so great, and their desire for peace 
so very deep, that this was quite overlooked. 

Lee must have read the memorandum with as 
much surprise as gratification. He asked for and 
obtained another important concession — that 
those of the cavalry and artillery who owned 
their horses should be allowed to take them home 
for use on their farms. Colonel Parker, whose 
Indian features and coloring had given General 
Lee a start of surprise when the staff came into 
the room, was called upon to make copies of this 
important paper, and General Lee's secretary per- 
formed the same service for the short letter of 
acceptance that his chief prepared. These were 
signed by the respective generals and duly deliv- 
ered. 

Shortly before four o'clock General Lee bade 
good-by to General Grant, bowed to the other 
officers, and left the house. A group of Union 
officers in the yard rose as he appeared on the 




M<-1.i:an's HOl"SE, APPOMATTOX COfRT-llllI SE 

■^.m "^^^X^i -^.-M: w ■■^-'. 







GENEKAL LEE AND COLONEL MARSHALL LEAVING MCLEAN S HOUSE 
AFTEK THE SIKRENUER 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 271 

porch, but he seemed not to see them as he stood 
waiting for the orderly to bring up his horse. His 
gaze was turned sadly toward the valley where his 
army lay, and he beat his hands together in an 
absent way. Grant and his officers followed him 
out of doors. As the vanquished general mounted 
and rode away Grant stepped down from the 
porch and raised his hat. All the others imitated 
this act of courtesy, and Lee, acknowledging the 
salute, rode off at a slow trot. 

Grant, who had learned from Lee that the Con- 
federate army was in a starving condition, at 
once gave orders that rations be issued to them. 
Their General had thought that 25,000 would be 
sufficient. The number surrendered proved even 
greater, the actual number of paroles signed being 
28,231 ; which, added to the captures made in the 
preceding week, and the thousands who deserted 
at every cross-roads leading to their homes, shows 
how considerable an army Lee commanded when 
Grant "started out gunning." 

The news of the surrender spread like wild-fire 
among the Union troops. The gunners prepared 
to fire a national salute, but Grant would not per- 
mit it. He forbade any rejoicing over a fallen 
enemy, who, he hoped, would be an enemy no 
longer. This was as it should be, and as he had 
decreed at Vicksburg. 



272 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

As General-in-chief, Grant's place was now in 
Washington. His task in the field was finished. 
Richmond had fallen, and Lee's army was van- 
quished. He was anxious to communicate with 
his various generals, and to stop at once the im- 
mense purchases of supplies and ammunition 
rendered unnecessary by the victory of the day 
before. Before leaving he rode out beyond his 
lines toward the Confederate headquarters to 
make a visit of farewell to General Lee. The 
habit of years was too strong. At the Confeder- 
ate picket line he was politely but firmly halted! 
General Lee came at a gallop to receive his distin- 
guished visitor, and to correct the mistake of his 
too zealous guard. They met on a bit of rising 
ground overlooking the lines, and, still on horse- 
back, remained in conversation for half an hour 
or more, the officers who accompanied them 
drawn up in a semicircle quite out of earshot. 
The talk was of the present and the future. Lee 
thought the war at an end, and slavery dead. 
The sooner the other Confederate armies sur- 
rendered, the better. Grant, who realized that 
Lee had more influence than any man in the 
South, urged him to make a public appeal to 
hasten the coming of peace; but Lee, loyal to 
Jefiferson Davis and a government that had 
ceased to exist, answered that he could not, with- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 273 

out first consulting "the President." Then they 
parted, Lee to take a final farewell of his army, 
and Grant to begin his journey to Washington. 

The trip was long and tedious, owing to the 
badly mended railroad. Grant thought earnestly 
on the way, as he had thought in the weeks before 
Appomattox, about what was to happen after the 
Confederates laid down their arms. Since Lee's 
surrender the officers of the two armies had 
mingled joyously. It was almost as if they were 
friends long separated while fighting under one 
flag. Grant knew that the rank and file of both 
armies were as friendly. He remembered the 
chaffing before Vicksburg, and the time at Chat- 
tanooga when he had appeared unheralded at a 
picket post while the men had arranged a tempo- 
rary truce to get water from the stream that 
flowed between the lines. ''Turn out the guard — 
commanding general," his men had cried, while 
from the Confederate side the echo had come, 
"Turn out the guard— General Grant"; and they 
had turned out and given him the proper salute. 
He felt that if the two armies could work to- 
gether, literally under one flag, for even a short 
campaign, much bitterness would be extin- 
guished, and much good-will gained. And he 
thought of Mexico, where the French were trying 
to establish a monarchy— a proceeding our gov- 



274 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

ernment disapproved, but up to that time had not 
had the leisure or the strength to openly resent. 
The thought came to him of leading the Union 
and Confederate armies toward if not against 
these interlopers, and he wondered if that were 
the solution of the problem of once more uniting 
the South and the North. 

It was only a fancy, and it got no farther than 
his brain, but he felt sure that there might be 
worse plans. 



XIII 
A soldier's honor 

GRANT had won a colossal victory— had ren- 
dered an inestimable service to his country, 
and won undying honor for himself. But as 
usual, thoughts of himself found little lodgment 
in his brain. He was as simple and unassuming 
the day after Appomattox as he had been the day 
before Sumter. 

Once in Washington he found much to do. It 
is possible he did not even realize that the 
throngs that blocked the streets about his hotel, 
and the shouts that rent the air when he ap- 
peared, were for Grant the conqueror as well as 
for the peace that he had won. But his wife who 
was with him doubtless understood. 

The Secretary of War issued an order to stop 
at once all drafting and recruiting, cutting down 
the purchase of supplies, reducing the number of 
officers, and removing all hindrances to commerce 
wherever practicable. This was in effect a public 
announcement of peace, and the city gave itself 
over to rejoicing. Bands of music playing pa- 



276 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

triotic airs were everywhere, crowds were shout- 
ing, and Grant's name was the burden of their 
cry. 

He visited the White House, where Mr. Lin- 
coln wrung his hand in welcome, thanking him 
with all the earnestness of a friend and all the 
dignity of a President for the great service he 
had done the nation. He was invited to attend 
the meeting of the cabinet, and listened while the 
great President, loving and magnanimous toward 
the South, spoke of the work next to be done— the 
perfecting of peace and reestablishment of civil 
government. He was especially anxious to avoid 
anything that looked like punishment. They 
need not expect him to take part in trying and 
hanging these men for treason. "Enough lives 
have been sacrificed!" he exclaimed, and to that 
the peace-loving General could heartily echo, 
"Amen !" Not one of the little company dreamed 
that the man who gave utterance to these 
thoughts, his strong deeply-lined face a-quiver 
with emotion and kindly impulse, was to be him- 
self the next sacrifice. 

Yet so it was. That same night, Friday, the 
14th of April, the pistol of a hate-crazed fanatic 
brought his noble life to a close, and Grant, who 
had been asked to accompany him to the theater, 
perhaps narrowly escaped the same fate. The 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 277 

evening papers had piade the announcement that 
General and Mrs. Grant, as well as Mr. and Mrs. 
Lincoln, would be present, but Grant in replying 
to the President's invitation only said that they 
would go if they were in the city. Finding it pos- 
sible to finish his most pressing tasks and leave that 
afternoon for Burlington, New Jersey, where his 
children were in school, he sent his excuses to the 
President and took the four-o'clock train. Twice 
during his drive to the station a dark, reckless- 
looking man on horseback rode by and peered into 
the carriage, and Mrs. Grant, seeing him, drew 
back and exclaimed that the same man had sat 
near her in the hotel dining-room at lunch-time. 
The General made light of it, ascribing the rider's 
curiosity to the wild enthusiasm that possessed 
the town; but he was glad to be getting away 
from all this "show business," and had no regrets 
for the crowded theater, and the shouts that 
would have greeted him if he had appeared in the 
President's box that night. Next day, when por- 
traits of the murderer were flung broadcast, his 
face was recognized as the face of the man who 
had followed the carriage of the General-in-chief. 
What motive Booth had will never be known. It 
may have been mere curiosity to learn the Gen- 
eral's movements, or it may have been some far 
blacker design. 



278 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

It was at Philadelphia, about midnight, that the 
news of the night's tragedy reached Grant. 
Crowds were there to greet him, despite 'the late- 
ness of the hour— but there were also telegrams 
which made him deaf to the noise of their cheers. 
After reading them he sat with bowed head, per- 
fectly silent, until his wife asked him gently what 
bad news they brought. 

It was not only that he had lost a friend, and 
that the country had lost a President. He real- 
ized as few others did the magnitude of the loss 
—how much the broad statesmanship and kindly 
wisdom of the martyred ruler would have meant 
to the country, and especially to the South, in the 
days that were at hand. "To bind up the nation's 
wounds," to "do all which may achieve and 
cherish a just and lasting peace," had been the 
concern of the great heart and noble mind of the 
man who was dead. Where would the passions 
aroused by his murder, the hatred and terror and 
revenge into which the people were thrown, the 
power suddenly thrust into the hands of an un- 
trained and untried man, lead a country blind 
with grief? 

A special train was made ready to take Grant 
back to Washington. He had left the city gay 
and brilliant like a festival, decorated with flags, 
and echoing with patriotic music. When he re- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 279 

turned people were going about pale with sorrow, 
somber trappings of black were being raised over 
the white marble porticos of the public buildings, 
private houses of all classes, from the dwellings 
of the wealthy to the huts of the poorest laborers, 
showed their sable tributes of respect, and in grief 
for the man who was gone, 'iittle children cried 
in the streets." 

Lincoln, the President, had been killed. Mr. 
Seward, the Secretary of State, had been seri- 
ously, it was feared mortally wounded. Andrew 
Johnson, the new President, was unknown and 
little trusted. To the people at large it was a 
relief to know that Grant, on whom they had come 
to rely as on a tower of unfailing strength, was at 
his post in Washington. On him, and on Secre- 
tary Stanton of the War Department, fell the 
great task of disbanding the immense army of 
volunteers that had fought the war to a victorious 
close. Though it was practically over when Lee 
laid down his arms at Appomattox, the other Con- 
federate forces did not immediately surrender. 
General Johnston, who had been contesting Sher- 
man's progress in North Carolina, finally capitu- 
lated on the 26th of April. General E. Kirby 
Smith held out beyond the Mississippi for a month 
longer. Before the end of May, however, all the 
Confederate forces had laid down their arms, the 



28o THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

civil government of which Jefferson Davis had 
been the head was disbanded, and its chief in 
prison. The great rebelhon was over, and the 
national government once more supreme. 

What was to become of the immense army that 
had brought this about? Would it, could it, melt 
peaceably again into the greater body of citizens 
out of which it had sprung at its country's call? 
Now that their work was done there was no room 
for them, as an army, in our American scheme of 
government; but was it reasonable to suppose 
that a million men trained to the use of arms, 
flushed with victory, and led by officers they loved 
and trusted, would consent to disband and go to 
work again at the humdrum tasks of civil life? 
All the countries of Europe, even those most 
friendly, watched to see, and those not so friendly 
prophesied, with ill-concealed joy, of trouble sure 
to come when "a few men in black coats at Wash- 
ington" attempted to disband the army. They 
little knew the temper of the volunteers who had 
fought and won. They had not joined the army 
from any love of soldiering, but for love of coun- 
try. With incredible ease and swiftness the army 
of 1,000,000 men was brought down to a peace 
footing of 25,000. 

Before they were mustered out they enjoyed 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 281 

one last triumph, a march through the streets of 
Washington, the national capital, under the eyes 
of the officers of the country they had saved, and 
of Grant, their heloved captain. For two days 
they marched, filling the wide stretch of Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue from the Capitol to Georgetown, 
while the street rang with the tramp of their feet, 
the music of regimental bands, and the applause 
of people gathered from far and near. 

In front of the White House a reviewing stand 
had been built, whereon sat the new President, 
Andrew Johnson, with General Grant at his right 
hand. Behind and around them were high of- 
ficials of the government, and groups of ladies 
bright as beds of flowers in their spring finery. 
An unclouded May sun shone on the endless 
stream of blue and flashing steel that rounded the 
turn of the avenue, detached itself into regiments 
and companies as it drew near, brought burnished 
weapons to "present" in passing the stand, and 
swept on again, a solid wall of men that ended 
only where the street was lost to view. 

The Army of the Potomac was given the first 
place, as was its right, since it was older in point 
of time than the armies of the West, and had been 
for four years the living bulwark and defense of 
the capital. General Meade rode at the head of 

17 



282 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

the column, and the people cheered and strewed 
flowers in his way. Next came the cavalry — 
seven miles of cavalry — not led by Sheridan, for 
he was already on his way to new duties in the 
West, but by his able lieutenants, generals whose 
renown was only less than that of their gallant 
chief. For two hours these swift horsemen 
passed, and as each of the regimental colors ap- 
peared opposite the reviewing stand the President 
doffed his hat— but the Lieutenant-General rose 
and saluted. Afterward came the infantry, their 
step elastic, their weapons glittering like new, 
their uniforms, not new and spotless, but dulled to 
the faded blue of honorable service. The battle- 
flags they carried were faded too, and every rent 
in their tattered folds was eloquent of deeds of 
heroism and the bravery of comrades who had laid 
down their lives on well-fought fields. The men 
walked shoulder to shoulder, but there was room 
in their ranks, and in the minds of all who saw, 
for that large and silent army that had not re- 
turned from the war. People threw flowers upon 
these veterans as they passed, until some, men as 
well as officers, were almost hidden under their 
fragrant burden. The music of the regimental 
bands, the sounds of shouting and applause, vied 
for mastery, and when some favorite marching 
song was played, the spectators along the route 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 283 

joined in the chorus. All day long the blue-clad 
host marched by, until the whole Army of the 
Potomac had passed once more under the eye of 
Grant its leader. 

Next day came Sherman's men from the West, 
bronzed and sinewy, with a trifle more swinging 
vigor in their stride, and a trifle less neatness and 
discipline, perhaps, but as like the army of Meade 
as brothers of one family. At their head rode 
Sherman, tall and spare and martial. Before each 
division came a pioneer corps of negroes with 
picks and spades and shovels ; and after each a 
squad of "bummers," who had been foragers for 
the army on its march to the sea, dressed in their 
characteristic garb, and leading donkeys laden 
with queer spoil, regimental pets sitting gravely 
on the backs of mules, or piccaninnies rolling 
their eyes and grinning with delight. There was 
laughter at these grotesque figures, with more ap- 
plause, and showers of fragrant flowers, and not 
one whit less enthusiasm than on the previous 
day. Here too the flags were faded and torn, and 
the laughter would choke with sudden sentiment, 
and then begin again louder than before. It was 
a great and moving spectacle; but it was more 
than that. It was an army of citizens marching 
joyously home again, after a long and terrible 
war. To each and all who saw it it meant more 



284 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

than shouting or tears or speech could express. 
The kindly, loving Abraham Lincoln, to whom 
the sight would have brought untold happiness, 
had gone to join their silent absent comrades. 
The new President who sat in his stead doffed his 
hat in token of respect, but it did not mean to him 
what it would have meant to his predecessor. To 
no one in the mighty throng could it mean all that 
it meant to the quiet man who hurried on foot 
across the White House lawn and took his place 
in a burst of applause at the new President's right 
hand. His emotions were deep and moving, 
though well-nigh mute. He hardly spoke, even 
to those he knew. As each division came into 
sight he eyed it critically, lovingly. These men 
had been his companions— later his children. The 
armies of the West had helped him win his fame. 
The Army of the Potomac had cemented his 
greatest victory. The people, seeing him, cheered 
and cheered, as if they would never cease, but he, 
unmindful of them all, rose and saluted the colors 
as they passed by. 

After the mustering out of troops was well 
under way, and Sheridan was despatched to the 
Mexican border to be at hand in case of disturb- 
ance, Grant allowed himself a short vacation in a 
two weeks' trip to New York and Chicago— a trip 
that was one prolonged ovation, people thronging 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 285 

the streets to see him and shouting themselves 
hoarse when he appeared. There were some 
among- them who greeted him as the coming 
President. Of this he took no notice, not betray- 
ing by so much as the quiver of an eyelash that 
he heard what was said. 

The most interesting part of his trip was his 
visit to West Point, which he had not seen since 
his graduation twenty-two years before. He 
came back loaded with honors, bearing a higher 
military rank than any American had held since 
the days of Washington. General Scott, feeble 
and venerable, the hero of his boyhood, the com- 
mander of his first wonderful march, met him 
with courtly ceremony. Salutes boomed, and the 
cadets of '65 looked upon him with deeper awe 
and admiration than he had ever felt for the gal- 
lant, massive old soldier who now donned his 
showiest uniform and uncovered his white head 
to do him honor. The successor of Washington 
experienced a strange return to the sensations of 
his youth. He felt himself once more that shy, 
awkward creature, an undergraduate, in the pres- 
ence of learned instructors and superior military 
genius — and the Academy, faculty and cadets 
alike, divining his state of mind, adored him for 
it, and cheered him to the echo. 

He returned to Washington to find trouble in 



286 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

the air. President Johnson, who took his oath of 
office in a moment of great bitterness and excite- 
ment, was unfortunately a man of very different 
character from the just and forbearing Lincoln. 
Like him he was self-educated, and like him he 
had been born in a slave State ; but there the re- 
semblance ceased. He was shrewd instead of 
wise, self-willed rather than strong, and he had a 
quite ungovernable temper. This was a poor man 
to take up the task laid down by his great pred- 
ecessor. He began his term of office by violently 
denouncing the "rebels'* as traitors for whom 
hanging was altogether too good. He even went 
so far as to accuse General Sherman of disloyalty 
because of the too generous terms he offered his 
opponent General Johnston when the latter came 
to surrender. Grant had his first struggle with 
the administration then and there, for it filled 
him with indignation that all Sherman's splendid 
work should be forgotten by the new President 
and by Secretary Stanton, who ought to have 
known better, just because of one mistake which 
was an error of judgment and not of intention. 
"It is infamous," Grant said, "infamous!" And 
when they ordered him down to North Carolina to 
take the matter out of Sherman's hands, he 
obeyed, but carried out the command with ex- 
treme delicacy, keeping himself in the background 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 287 

and leaving Sherman all the honor of concluding 
the surrender. 

Johnson announced his determination to "make 
treason odious," and as a means to that end pro- 
posed to arrest Generals Lee and Johnston. This 
Grant set himself to oppose with all the strength 
of his iron will. He had taken their paroles, and 
had given his promise that they would be allowed 
to return to their homes, "not to be disturbed by 
the United States authority so long as they ob- 
serve their paroles and the laws in force where 
they may reside." In this he had perhaps exceeded 
his authority, but the promise had been given, had 
been ratified by the government, and accepted by 
the nation. No power on earth could make it 
right to disregard that promise now. Johnson 
persisted in his purpose. "I will make treason 
odious," he repeated. "When can these men be 
tried?" 

"Never," said Grant, the battle-look settling on 
his face. "Never, unless they violate their 
parole." 

The President grew angry, and demanded by 
what right a commander interfered to save arch- 
traitors from punishment. 

At that Grant spoke words at white heat, but 
slow and low, and deadly as bullets. His soldier's 
honor was involved. He pointed out with merci- 



288 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

less distinctness the difference between a soldier's 
word and a politician's revenge, and he ended by 
declaring that rather than see these men arrested 
he would resign from the army. The President's 
rage beat back upon itself. He knew that Grant 
would carry out his threat, and he knew also that 
without Grant's help his administration was sure 
to fail. The question of arresting the two gen- 
erals was dropped and never mentioned again. 

And now began a struggle more trying than 
any of Grant's military battles— a struggle to 
strike a balance with the President's unstable 
policy, and to obtain something like justice in his 
dealings with the South. In the months that fol- 
lowed, President Johnson's attitude underwent a 
complete change. Whether it was due to rising 
ambition, whether he thought he saw a chance to 
be reelected by southern votes to the office he had 
reached through violence, or whether it was due 
to his birth and up-bringing, who shall say? Am- 
bition and the ties of blood are very strong. 
From being anxious to punish ''traitors" he began 
to advocate granting them unusual privileges, 
and in the end came apparently to think them the 
only people worth considering. 

Grant, as the head of the army, had great 
power in the South, for the war left behind it 
many troublesome questions, chief among which 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 289 

was how to deal with the conquered States whose 
governments had been swept away by the prog- 
ress of Union armies. The inhabitants could not 
be left without laws and officers of some kind, so 
the military had to guard property and preserve 
order until the people were again ready to assume 
the task. President Lincoln's policy had been to 
encourage the people to do this as rapidly as pos- 
sible. In Missouri and West Virginia they did 
it of their own free will. In other places he ap- 
pointed military governors to begin the work. It 
was as military governor of Tennessee that An- 
drew Johnson won the laurels that made him 
candidate for Vice-President, and, through a 
tragedy of fate, President of the United States. 
The end of the war opened wide the flood-gates 
of discussion as to how this "reconstruction" of 
civil rights ought to be brought about. Views were 
various, ranging from liberals who wanted all 
rights restored to the erring States, to men like 
Senators Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, 
who contended that the States committed suicide 
when they rebelled, and that they therefore no 
longer existed as States, but were merely "men 
and dirt," to be dealt with as the government saw 
fit. The question was made infinitely harder to 
settle by the presence of four millions of black 
people who had become free as a result of the war. 



290 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

When they were slaves they of course took no 
part in making or executing the laws. Now that 
they were free what ought to be done about them ? 
The southern whites objected savagely to being 
governed, or even assisted in governing, by their 
former slaves, whom they considered vastly their 
inferiors. People in the North agreed that the 
blacks were not ready to take up such tasks and 
duties, but that in course of time, after they be- 
came fitted for the rights of citizenship, they 
ought to have them. A few radicals contended 
that since the slaves were free they should be 
treated exactly like their former masters. 

The war practically came to an end in April. 
Congress did not meet until the following Decem- 
ber. In the eight months that intervened Presi- 
dent Johnson was free to follow his own will. 
After his first frenzy of severity he leaned more 
and more toward the side of the southern whites ; 
and he set up the claim that he as President had 
the sole right to decide what form of government 
should be given to the States lately in rebellion. 
This, of course, angered Congress, which felt 
that it had at least an equal right in the matter. 

When Congress came together it passed bills 
intended to guard against the abuse of privileges 
already granted by the President, and to protect 
the rights of the colored people, who were clearly 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 291 

neither wise enough nor strong enough to hold 
their own if their former masters chose to oppress 
them. The President considered this an en- 
croachment on his rights and vetoed the bills. 
Congress retaliated by passing them over his veto, 
and making them laws in spite of him. Meantime 
acts of bloodshed and violence took place 
throughout the South. Each side interpreted 
them as justifying its own line of action, and 
strove all the harder to carry its point. One 
measure led to another until Congress and the 
North became convinced that the only way to pro- 
tect the negro was to give him at once the right to 
vote and protect himself. An amendment to the 
Constitution called Article XIV was prepared with 
this in view, and offered to the southern States for 
acceptance. When it was rejected, a much severer 
measure was passed, taking away the rights al- 
ready bestowed, placing practically the whole 
South under military rule, ignoring the President 
to the point of insult, and giving Grant, as head 
of the army, almost the powers of a dictator. In- 
deed the law as first framed made him absolutely 
independent of the President, and provided that 
he could not be removed from office while Johnson 
remained President of the United States. Grant 
objected so strongly to these extraordinary pro- 
visions that they were modified. 



292 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

He would gladly have kept out of the quarrel if 
he had been able to do so, but his official position 
and his personal influence were too great to admit 
of that. Both sides wanted him. The President 
plied him with unsought personal favors, and lost 
no opportunity to emphasize the friendly relations 
between them, even to the extent of appearing un- 
bidden at his home at an evening party and stand- 
ing beside him to receive his guests. Such a mark 
of intimacy at a time when a President was sup- 
posed never to appear in society except under his 
own roof, created the greatest sensation. 

Congress promoted Grant once more — this time 
to the full rank of General — and called upon him 
to carry out its wishes. His position was most 
trying, for he could not sympathize fully with 
either side. He strove in his quiet, taciturn way 
to do his duty as he saw it. During the time that 
the President was so bitter against "traitors," he 
urged greater liberality, and scores of southern 
officers and hundreds of civilians appealed to him 
for help and protection. After Mr. Johnson's 
marked change of policy Grant felt that he was 
going too far, politically as well as with him per- 
sonally, but he had no more wish to be discour- 
teous to the President of the United States, who 
was his military superior, than he had to be 
abused by Congress and the North for views he 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 293 

did not hold. His friend Sherman, who watched 
him with eyes of sympathy, said of him at this 
time : 

I have been with General Grant in the midst of 
death and slaughter; when the howls of people 
reached him after Shiloh ; when messages were speed- 
ing to and fro from his army to Washington, bearing 
slanders to induce his removal before Vicksburg; in 
Chattanooga when the soldiers were stealing the corn 
of the starving mules to satisfy their own hunger; at 
Nashville when he was ordered to the 'forlorn hope.' to 
command the Army of the Potomac so often defeated; 
and yet I never saw him more troubled than since he 
has been in Washington. 

As for the South, it cried out bitterly against 
this "terrible" new measure of Congress which 
took away all civil rights and put it under army 
rule until such time as it chose to humble itself 
and accept the Fourteenth Amendment that gave 
negroes the right to vote. It is a great tribute to 
Grant's fairness and justice that the people he 
had conquered regarded the fact of his holding 
this immense power as the one ray of hope in the 
situation. They felt sure that so long as he 
wielded the trust it would not be abused. He in- 
structed officers who were sent into the various 
districts to act with the greatest forbearance and 



294 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

moderation. Nothing excited him to vindictive 
punishment, and yet on the other hand his firm 
rule caused evil-doers to regard him with respect. 
Southern newspapers were forced to admit that 
no man suffered intentional injustice at his hands. 

Yet it was an impossible situation. No mortal 
living could please at once the South and the 
North, the President and Congress. It was only 
a question of time when the break would come. 
Finding he could not bend Grant to his will, Presi- 
dent Johnson tried to get him out of the way by 
sending him on a mission to Mexico; but Grant 
flatly declined to undertake it, saying that he was 
a military officer and bound to obey the Presi- 
dent's military command, but that this was a 
purely diplomatic office which he did not propose 
to accept. Johnson would gladly have dismissed 
him, but he did not dare. He was astute enough 
to see that if he could not make him do his bid- 
ding, or send him out of the country, the next best 
thing was to keep up a show of friendliness that 
would prevent the party opposed to himself from 
making Grant its choice for President. If once 
he should be nominated Johnson's own chances 
would be gone. 

The President grew daily more headstrong. 
On August 5, 1867, he attempted to remove Ed- 
win M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, who had 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 295 

been a member of President Lincoln's cabinet, 
and was now the only cabinet minister who op- 
posed his wishes. He sent him a curt note asking 
him to resign, which Stanton answered with one 
equally curt, refusing to do so until the meeting 
of Congress, Congress having passed a law which 
forbade the President removing a cabinet officer 
without the consent of the Senate. The Presi- 
dent then suspended him, and made Grant Secre- 
tary of War ad interim until Congress should 
investigate and decide whether Stanton had been 
justly removed. 

This placed Grant in another unpleasant pre- 
dicament. He had protested in writing against 
the removal of Stanton, but the President had not 
seen fit to make this fact public. The personal 
relations of Grant and Stanton were those of 
respect rather than of affection or even liking, 
but of late they had worked together in opposition 
to Mr. Johnson, and their official relations were 
very close. If Grant did as the President wished, 
Secretary Stanton would misunderstand and 
think he was again in full sympathy with John- 
son. If, on the other hand, he declined, some one 
else would be appointed who could do much harm 
that Grant might be able to avoid. This con- 
sideration led him to accept, but he called upon 
Stanton and personally explained his reasons for 



296 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

doing so. To the public he could not explain, and 
he reaped the reward of abuse, and of being de- 
nounced as a political trimmer. 

In his own mind he considered that he held the 
place "in trust" for Stanton, and he even decided 
questions more harshly than was his wont, be- 
cause he felt sure that Stanton would settle them 
in that way. His determination to keep the two 
positions perfectly distinct led to situations that 
would have been laughable had not the causes 
which brought them about been so vexatious. 
Stanton's office was on one side of the street, his 
own on the other. He transacted the business of 
each in its proper place, and wrote orders as 
Secretary of War to himself as General U. S. 
Grant, and made reports and answers in the char- 
acter of General Grant to the Secretary of War 
across the way. 

At first glance this seems like silly child's play, 
or at most a bit of sentiment totally out of keep- 
ing with Grant's matter-of-fact character. On 
the contrary it was the most matter-of-fact and 
correct proceeding. It kept the official records 
perfect as they should be ; merely routine matters 
were hastened by being attended to in their ac- 
customed place, and it emphasized the fact that 
Grant considered the office not his own, but 
merely held in trust until the reinstatement of 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 297 

Stanton or the aj)pointmcnt of Stanton's succes- 
sor. The assertion of one of his officers that he 
treated the members of his mihtary staff with 
more formahty on Stanton's side of tlie street 
than on his own, niav l)e a hit of hvcl\' imag'ina- 
tion, or it may have been a quite real and totally 
unconscious expression on Grant's part of his 
earnest determination to do an unpleasant duty 
thoroughly and well. 

It was an unpleasant duty. It was a more or 
less open conflict with the President from begin- 
ning to end. Johnson insisted on removing some 
of Grant's most trusted officers in the South, and 
as he was within his rights as President and as 
Commander-in-chief of the army, this had to be 
done; but in every w^ay possible Grant upheld the 
will of Congress against that of Johnson's system 
of reconstruction. 

He found it very irksome to attend cabinet 
meetings and listen to discussions and arrange- 
ments of which he entirely disapproved; and he 
asked to be relieved of the duty on the ground 
that he was a military officer, and as such had 
nothing to do with the making of policies and 
plans. No attention being paid to this, he formed 
the habit of attending the meetings only long 
enough to submit papers that required the atten- 
tion of the President and cabinet, and then with- 



18 



29B THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

drawing. This, with a letter he wrote Mr. John- 
son while trying to save General Sheridan from 
removal, showed the country that he was not 
thoroughly in accord with the President after all ; 
but it resulted in more criticism rather than less, 
the South abusing him for opposing his chief, 
and the North for not opposing him more success- 
fully. 

Grant retired behind his usual rampart of si- 
lence and waited for the Senate to decide whether 
or not Stanton was Secretary of War. In 
January it took the matter up, and on the 13th 
resolved that the President's reasons for remov- 
ing his minister had been insufficient. This, of 
course, reinstated Stanton. The decision was 
reached quite late on Monday. Early next 
morning Grant went to the War Department, 
locked and bolted the door of the Secretary's of- 
fice on the outside, handed the key to the Ad- 
jutant-General of the Army, with the remark 
that he could be found in his own office at army 
headquarters, and marched across the street, feel- 
ing no doubt like a free man once more. He had 
informed the President a few days before that he 
would instantly give up the office if the Senate de- 
cided in favor of Stanton; and to his mind that 
closed the whole matter. 

Not so with the President. He flew into a rage. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 299 

summoned Grant to the White House, and ac- 
cused him of having promised to stay in the 
cabinet, and then of deserting him without suffi- 
cient warning; called on other cabinet members 
to bear out what he said, and raised the bald ques- 
tion of the truth between them. Grant had been 
accused of many things in his day, but never of 
lying. He answered with spirit, and after a 
stormy scene left the White House the avowed 
and open enemy of Mr. Johnson, and — had he but 
known it— the inevitable candidate of the Repub- 
lican party for President of the United States. 



XIV 

THE nation's choice 

THE patience of Congress was exhausted. 
President Johnson's conduct in removing 
Secretary Stanton proved the last straw. In 
March, 1868, he was impeached, and the Senate, 
sitting as a court, tried him for high crimes and 
misdemeanors. A vote of two thirds was neces- 
sary to convict him, and he escaped conviction by 
the narrow margin of one vote. During the trial 
Grant was called upon to testify, and did so 
clearly and dispassionately, not allowing his per- 
sonal resentment to color or in any way influence 
his statement of what had passed between them. 
Grant felt that Johnson was a dangerous man, 
and desired his conviction; but after the passions 
of the hour had time to cool he was glad the 
Senate decided as it did, being convinced that 
Johnson had received his lesson, and that the 
precedent of a successful impeachment would be 
worse for the country in the long run than any 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 301 

harm Johnson could do during the short re- 
mainder of his term in office. 

On May 20th, a few days before President 
Johnson's trial came to an end, 650 delegates of 
the Republican party, representing every State in 
the Union, even the extreme South, met in 
Chicago to choose a candidate for President of 
the United States. Only one person was seriously 
mentioned for the place, and that was Ulysses S. 
Grant. The idea was not a new one. Missouri 
had cast her vote for him in the convention that 
nominated Lincoln for his second term. Ever 
since the war people had spoken of him as the 
next President; but the strange fact remained 
that until his quarrel with Johnson nobody really 
knew to which political party he belonged. He 
had entered the army before he was twenty-one, 
and until he reached middle life his military duties 
had prevented his taking any part in political af- 
fairs. He had voted for Buchanan, but he had 
fought for the Union. He was America's great- 
est living citizen. Both parties were eager to 
claim him; and his talent for silence had been so 
great that no man could say from actual knowl- 
edge, **He is a Democrat," or "He is a Repub- 
lican." During his residence in St. Louis he 
joined a lodge of the ''Know Nothing" or Ameri- 
can party, but one meeting convinced him that its 



302 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

doctrines were not for him. He had gone on 
consistently doing his duty as he saw it. The 
Repubhcans claimed him because of his acts. The 
Democrats pointed triumphantly to the fact that 
he was a member of Johnson's cabinet, and ap- 
parently his warm personal friend. 

The idea of being President had little attraction 
for Grant. He had looked too deep into Lincoln's 
care-saddened eyes, and had himself stood in the 
blinding glare of prejudice and abuse that beat 
about Johnson. He had no illusions concerning 
the office, and much preferred the honorable place 
he already held— the highest possible grade in the 
army, with its assured social consideration and 
an ample salary for the rest of his life. He must 
of course resign all this if he became President. 
He was a comparatively young man. He would 
be only fifty-one when his term of office came to 
an end. What could he do after that? He had 
no private fortune, and no training outside of the 
army. Was it wise to give up a competency and 
comparative ease for the vexatious and trouble- 
some honor of four years in the White House? 
He was distinctly annoyed when people began to 
speak to him on the subject, and would make no 
answer, but simply look at them and leave them to 
continue the conversation as best they might. 
Had he spoken they could have replied and re- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 303 

newed their urging, but this absolute silence was 
the most baffling and disconcerting comment he 
could make. No matter how ready, they would 
stammer and blush, strive to change the subject, 
and at the end of a very few minutes take their 
leave. 

But as time passed circumstances seemed to 
thrust upon him more and more the task of oppos- 
ing President Johnson and his policies; and he 
began to realize and admit to himself and his inti- 
mate friends the possibility, even the duty, of 
becoming a candidate. His break with Johnson, 
and the letters that passed between them after 
that famous interview, made the possibility a cer- 
tainty ; and as Grant was only human, he took an 
interest in the outcome of the struggle, though as 
usual he was uncommunicative. 

The Convention met on May 20th. The dele- 
gates, eager to do honor to Grant, could hardly 
wait for the routine preliminary business to be 
disposed of, and hurried through with it as rap- 
idly as possible. On the 21st they adopted their 
"platform" of party principles on which the cam- 
paign was to be made— a short document pro- 
fessing ''sympathy wnth all oppressed people 
struggling for their rights," and laying stress on 
the duty of the government to see that fair elec- 
tions were held in the South. It also declared in 



304 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

favor of honest money, encouraging foreign im- 
migration, and of restoring civil rights to re- 
pentant southerners. 

The platform disposed of, the presiding officer 
announced that nominations were in order. Gen- 
eral John A. Logan, the man who had introduced 
Grant to the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers, was 
on his feet almost before the announcement was 
concluded. "Then, sir," he said, "in the name of 
the loyal citizens and soldiers and sailors of this 
great Republic, in the name of loyalty, liberty, 
humanity, and justice, I nominate as candidate for 
the chief magistracy of this nation, Ulysses S. 
Grant." The audience sprang to its feet, and the 
building rocked with cheers. As soon as he could 
make himself heard a delegate from South Caro- 
lina moved that the vote be taken by acclamation, 
but the answer was a chorus of "No, no !" Every 
State wanted to be heard, and the roll was called. 
One after the other they answered, giving him all 
the votes they had, and accompanying the an- 
nouncement with expressions of hearty good will, 
or quotations from some one of his famous letters 
or telegrams. California cried that it had come 
thousands of miles to cast its vote for General 
Grant. Ohio cast "Forty-two votes for her illus- 
trious son." Louisiana "proposed to fight it out 
on that line if it took all summer," and so on until 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 305 

all of the States had paid their tribute. When the 
last name had been called the president of the con- 
vention announced the result : 

"Gentlemen of the Convention : The roll is 
completed. You have 650 votes, and you have 
given 650 votes for Ulysses S. Grant." 

Again the audience cheered, and when a large 
portrait of the General was displayed, with the 
motto, ''Match him," it seemed as though the 
shouting would never come to an end. Old Jesse 
Grant, the proudest man in the United States, sat 
on the platform, silenced and overcome by this 
ovation to his son. After the applause had suf- 
ficiently quieted down Schuyler Colfax of In- 
diana, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
was nominated for Vice-President. 

It was Stanton who brought the news to the 
new candidate as he sat in his ofiice at the War 
Department. The old War Secretary came hur- 
rying up the stairs, breathless in his haste lest 
some one should be before him. "General!" he 
burst out as soon as he entered the room, "I 
have come to tell you that you have been nomi- 
nated by the Republican party for President of 
the United States!" On the battle-field Grant 
never paid exploding shells the compliment of a 
start of surprise. He received this bomb with 
equal composure. "There was no shade of 



3o6 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

exultation or agitation on his face, not a flush on 
his cheek, nor a flash in his eye," said one who 
witnessed the incident. "I doubt whether he felt 
elated, even in those recesses where he concealed 
his inmost thoughts." It must have reminded 
those who looked on of unforgetable battle days, 
when danger and excitement were all about, and 
Grant was the calmest man on the field. 

There was always apprehension for the chief in 
those days, and there might well be now, when he 
was entering on a new career — throwing down 
the gage of war to forces about which he knew 
little, and whose powers of destruction were more 
insidious than shot or shell. The position he took 
was extremely characteristic. He had not sought 
the nomination. Being in the fight he hoped to 
win; but he felt it unfitting, indeed impossible, for 
him to take any active part in the campaign. If 
elected he would take command and govern the 
country as he had fought his campaigns, as 
seemed to him wise. Until the people made him 
their President he would not lift a finger to in- 
fluence their choice. To the crowd that gathered 
around his house and shouted, "Grant! Grant! 
General Grant !" he made his-first .political speech. 
It was three sentences long, and the last two 
showed the stand he took. "All I can say is, that 
to whatever position I am called by your will, I 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 307 

will endeavor to discharge its duties with fidelity 
and honesty of purjiose. Of my rectitude in the 
performance of public duties you must judge for 
yourselves from my record which is open to you." 

That was it — the people must judge for them- 
selves. He went to his home in Galena, as far 
removed as possible from the bustle of the cam- 
paign, and there spent the summer, refusing even 
to have letters forwarded to him. This was not 
what the prominent men in the party wanted. 
They wished to consult him. He. answered with 
chilling dispassionateness that he had no wish to 
consult them. He did not explain what was really 
in his heart— that he hoped to keep himself clear 
of all party pledges and entanglements, to be, if 
elected. President of the whole people, and not 
merely of the Republican party. 

He spent the summer quietly in the home the 
people of Galena had given him when he returned 
from the war — the gift he valued most of all that 
had been showered on him in the days of enthu- 
siasm after Appomattox, when people swarmed 
streets and corridors to see him, and even carried 
off his shoes as mementos if he unwarily set them 
outside his bedroom door to be blacked. There is 
a story about this house that connects it with his 
•candidacy. One day in 1864 when somebody sug- 
gested the possibility of his being President he 



308 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

replied testily, "I am not a candidate for any 
office, but I would like to be mayor of Galena long 
enough to fix the sidewalks — especially the one 
leading to my house." When he returned a popu- 
lar hero, and was driven toward this gift of which 
he knew nothing, he saw that the people had 
erected two triumphal arches over the street. One 
bore the names of his principal battles, and the 
other the inscription, "General, the sidewalk is 
built !" At the end of the sidewalk was this new 
house, furnished in every part, where a smoking 
western dinner awaited him, and a committee of 
old friends, men and women, stood ready to wel- 
come him to his own. Tears of emotion had been 
in his eyes as he thanked them, and it was here 
that he came to wait while the people of the coun- 
try "judged for themselves." 

It was not lack of interest that made him deny 
himself and keep that mended sidewalk free from 
the feet of hundreds of party followers who 
would gladly have come if he had given the word. 
He read the papers earnestly and thoroughly, and 
talked freely with intimate friends about the 
chances of election. He would look at a map and 
say with confidence, "We shall carry this State, 
and this one, and this." It was a very bitter 
campaign. Johnson, who had betrayed his own 
party, and hoped to be the Democratic standard- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 309 

bearer, was not even considered, though the 
Democratic convention which met in New York 
in July was decidedly southern in sentiment. 
Horatio Seymour of New York was its nominee 
for President, and Frank P. Blair of Missouri for 
Vice-President. Compared with some of the 
utterances in the North the political leaders in the 
South were guarded and respectful in their tone 
toward Grant. In the North nothing bad enough 
could be said about him. He was a "butcher," and 
a "drunken tanner," and a great many other things 
quite as near the truth ; while every town in which 
he had lived was searched for people of ill repute 
who would bear witness to tales of his vice and 
wickedness. It was natural that papers on the 
other side should retaliate. The campaign was a 
revelation of things that need not have been said. 
Once during the campaign Grant went to St. 
Louis, and once to Chicago, but he stayed at the 
houses of intimate friends, and avoided political 
meetings. He did not even attend the meetings 
in his own town of Galena. Though they did not 
approve, the influential men in his party generally 
respected his wish to be left alone. He enter- 
tained many casual visitors, and he walked and 
drove and visited among his neighbors as if he 
had no personal concern in what was going on. 
When elec4:ion day, November 3, 1868, arrived, 



3IO THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Grant went to the polls like any other citizen of 
Galena, and cast his vote for the entire Repub- 
lican ticket, with the exception of President. 

At about ten o'clock that night he was at the 
house of his friend E. B. Washburne, not far 
from his own, where private wires had been laid, 
and arrangements made to receive the returns. 
There were perhaps two dozen people present, in- 
cluding newspaper reporters. With the excep- 
tion of the candidate, Mr. Washburne was the 
only one in the company of national prominence. 
Grant did not pretend indifference, but neither did 
he seem vitally interested. His friends had often 
seen him display more enthusiasm over a game of 
cards. There were moments during the evening 
when the news was unfavorable, and the chances 
for and against his election seemed evenly bal- 
anced, but between one and two o'clock in the 
morning all doubt was at an end, and the little 
company began to congratulate him on his elec- 
tion. Then they walked with him back to his own 
home. Fifty or a hundred people had gathered in 
honor of the new President-elect. Standing on 
the doorstep in the starlight he made them a little 
speech, calm and simple and free from elation, 
and carrying the same meaning as the words he 
spoke at the time of his nomination. One expres- 
sion he used which was afterward harshly criti- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 311 

cized, yet it expressed his spirit and his attitude 
to perfection. "The responsibihties of the posi- 
tion I feel," he said, "but accept them without 
fear." 

Shortly after the election he went to Washing- 
ton, where he remained attending to his duties in 
the War Department, for he did not resign his 
commission in the Army until he took the oath of 
office as President. The 4th of March, 1869, 
inauguration day, was raw and disagreeable, but 
the streets were filled with a throng almost as great 
as at the time of the grand review. About the 
time the President-elect started toward the Capi- 
tol the sun shone out bright and warm — an 
augury, as some fanciful people claimed, for the 
new administration. 

It is the custom for the outgoing and incoming 
Presidents to ride to the Capitol in the same car- 
riage, escorted by a procession made up of mili- 
tary and civic dignitaries ; and after the oath of 
office has been taken and the inaugural address 
read, for them to return together to the Executive 
Mansion, where the man who has laid down the 
cares of office takes leave of his successor, and 
wishes him all good fortune. It is a gracious if 
formal custom, and as such much to be com- 
mended; but Grant was too blunt an enemy, and 
his relations with Johnson were too strained to 



312 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

admit of this bit of official etiquette. He declined 
to drive with the man who accused him of un- 
truth, and took his way to the Capitol in his own 
phaeton, accompanied only by General Rawlins. 
Andrew Johnson remained at his desk signing 
papers until twelve o'clock. 

The waiting crowd was disappointed. Instead 
of a general in full uniform, mounted on a mag- 
nificent charger, or drawn in a carriage by pranc- 
ing horses, they saw a short, rather stockily built 
man, wearing civilian dress, 'driving with a single 
companion in his own modest turnout. There 
was a military band, and he had a mounted escort, 
but there was little warlike splendor, and no pos- 
ing for effect as the General of a great country 
laid down his sword to become its President. 

Out from the east portico of the Capitol, where 
Presidents have taken the oath of office since the 
nation was young, a temporary platform had been 
built to hold the great number of dignitaries 
whose office gave them a right to places near the 
chief actors in the day's drama. Below in front 
of the platform the military was drawn up, and 
beyond the soldiers stretched a crowd filling the 
wide plaza. Men, and women too, had been 
standing there for hours, intent on getting and 
keeping a good place from which to see the new 
President. At twelve o'clock a stately but simple 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 313 

l)rocession passed througii the sculptured bronze 
doors and out upon the j^Iatforni. First came tlie 
justices of the Supreme Court in their long silken 
robes, then the President-elect, who made his way 
to the little table at the front of the platform. 
After him, Mr. Colfax, the new Vice-President, 
followed by a long line of senators and diplomats, 
and other people of note. A cheer went up when 
the soldiers caught sight of Grant, and it was 
echoed and carried back far into the crowd. 
When it was stilled the Chief Justice opened his 
Bible, Grant reverently laid his hand upon it, and 
in his characteristic attitude, right foot slightly 
forward, and head a little bent, repeated after the 
Justice the words of the oath : 

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully 
execute the office of President of the United 
States, and will, to the best of my ability, pre- 
serve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the 
United States." 

At the conclusion he bent and kissed the sacred 
book, and at the same instant the booming of 
cannon announced to all who heard that Grant 
the soldier had sworn to preserve, protect, and 
defend as President the country his sword had 
helped to save. 

Then he began his inaugural address, reading 
in a voice so low that only those nearest could 

19 



314 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

hear him. When he was part way through little 
Nellie Grant, his daughter, tired of staying with 
her mother and a group of ladies back of the 
grave Supreme Court judges, came forward and 
slipping her hand in his stood beside him until 
some one gave her a chair where she could sit 
almost within touch of the man who was more to 
her than to the thousands who made the heavens 
ring with cheers when he ended his address. 

His inaugural was quiet, measured, and ear- 
nest, touching on many subjects, and treating all 
with moderation. It outlined his policy, which 
was to deal justly with all parts of his own coun- 
try, and also with the other nations of the world; 
to urge that the great war debt be paid in honest 
money; to appoint to office only such men as 
would execute all the laws in good faith; to 
advocate the adoption of a Fifteenth Amendment 
to the Constitution, which should establish beyond 
a doubt the right of colored people to vote; to 
exercise his power of vetoing bills if he thought 
them unwise, but if Congress should pass them 
over his veto, to regard them as law, and faith- 
fully to execute them. "I shall have a policy to 
recommend," he said, "but none to enforce 
against the will of the people." In conclusion he 
said: "I would ask patient forbearance one to- 
ward another throughout the land, and a deter- 




GESKRAI. liKANT AS rKKSIl>KNT 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 317 

mined eflforl on the part of every citizen toward 
cementing a happy Union ; and I ask the prayers 
of the nation to Ahiiighty God in behalf of this 
consiminiation." 

When he had finished President Grant and 
Vice-President Colfax drove to the White House, 
where they were received by the Secretary of 
War, General Grant's staff, and a few others. 
People waited patiently about the gates, hoping 
that he would open them and hold a general recep- 
tion, but he refused. He had been too deeply 
moved by the ceremony he had just passed 
through to submit to the ordeal, though an added 
reticence, almost a sternness, was the only sign he 
gave of his emotion. 

That night there was a grand reception and 
ball, such as always closes the day of inaugura- 
tion. This one, like many that went before, and 
many that came after, was a huge affair, repre- 
senting all classes of society, and nearly all na- 
tions of the earth. Grant would gladly have 
dispensed with it if that had been possible, but it 
was like the tinsel on his general's uniform, grati- 
fying to others, if not to himself. Possibly the 
satisfaction of his wife atoned in some measure 
for his own discomfort. 



XV 

GRANT, THE PRESIDENT 

IN his reply to the committee of the Republican 
Convention that came to notify him of his 
nomination, Grant had said : 

If chosen to fill the high office for which you have 
selected me, I will give to its duties the same energy, 
the same spirit and the same will that I have given to 
the performance of all duties which have devolved 
upon me heretofore. Whether I shall be able to per- 
form these duties to your entire satisfaction time will 
determine. 

Under the morning stars, as he paused before 
entering his door after learning of his election, he 
said: "The responsibilities of the position I feel, 
but accept them without fear." 

His formal letter accepting the nomination 
closed with the noble words : "Let us have peace." 

These three utterances show the spirit in which 
he approached his great task. His earnest desire 
was to govern rightly; to heal the wounds and 

318 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 319 

still the bitterness caused by the late war; tn 
brinc;^ order and contentment into the South ; to 
be, in short, by fairness and not by favor, Presi- 
dent of a united and happy country. Nobody 
questions his sincerity, yet no one can deny that 
his administration fell far short of what he de- 
sired and what the country expected of it. Worse 
men have made better Presidents. It is a period 
of his life that his admirers do not like to dwell 
upon— the spectacle of a great man, out of his 
element, battling doggedly with forces outside 
his knowledge and beyond his control. 

We Americans are noted for our adaptability 
— for the power of turning from one task to an- 
other, and doing each fairly well. This leads us 
perhaps to expect too much of our heroes, and 
particularly to regard the delicate art of govern- 
ing as merely a by-product of their other attain- 
ments. It would really be quite as logical to ex- 
pect a great civil engineer to be an equally great 
astronomer, just because he has a knowledge of 
mathematics and is an honest man, as to expect 
that Grant, preeminent in war, must make a cor- 
respondingly brilliant success of civil govern- 
ment. 

The truth is that the very qualities that made 
him a great general proved almost his undoing 
in the new office. Some of these were habits of 



320 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

mind, and some the results of life-long training. 
In military life there is a commander who orders, 
and all others obey. Grant had learned in the 
army to do both, but he had not learned to take 
others into his confidence, and to discuss with 
them the reasons for or against things that had 
to be done. He had planned his own campaigns, 
and kept his plans to himself up to the moment of 
their execution. His attempt to choose his 
cabinet in the same military fashion was a grave 
mistake at the very outset of his administration. 

To his military mind he was commander-in- 
chief of the Executive branch of the government ; 
and the cabinet— the Secretary of State, the 
Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretaries of War, 
Navy, Interior, etc., who were to direct the afifairs 
of the great departments of civil government and 
act as his council of advisers, were nothing more 
than stafif officers. He chose them on that basis, 
not because of national prominence or reputation, 
but because he personally liked them and thought 
them fit for the place. Also, following his old 
habit of secretiveness, he took no one into his con- 
fidence, in some cases not even the men them- 
selves, until the list was sent to the Senate for 
confirmation. 

It raised a deal of comment, all unfavorable. 
His friend Washburne was nominated for Secre- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 321 

tary of State, but there was a private understand- 
ing that he would serve only one week, and then 
be sent as minister to England. A. T. Stewart, 
a powerful New York merchant, was selected 
for Secretary of the Treasury, on the theory that 
a man who could successfully conduct his own 
large business would succeed with the finances of 
the government. Air. A. E. Borie of Philadel- 
phia, nominated for Secretary of the Navy, knew 
nothing about it until he read his name in the 
papers, and was more astonished than pleased. 
General Grant's old friend Rawlins was his 
choice for Secretary of War, but out of compli- 
ment to General Schofield, who had held the 
office since Stanton resigned at the close of the 
Johnson impeachment trial, Rawlins's nomina- 
tion, like that of the permanent Secretary of 
State, was withheld for one week. Mr. J. A. G. 
Creswell as Postmaster-General, Mr. E. Rock- 
wood Hoar as Attorney-General, and Jacob D. 
Cox for Secretary of the Interior, completed the 
list. 

The Senate confirmed these nominations at 
once, in spite of the criticism, but in a week the 
work all had to be done over again. Washburne 
and Schofield withdrew according to agreement. 
It was found that Mr. Stewart could not be Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, because of a law which for- 



322 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

bade any man engaged in trade from assuming 
that office. Neither Grant nor the Senate had 
been aware of this law. Some of the other n*ew 
cabinet members did not enjoy this peremptory 
way of being drafted without so much as *'by your 
leave." The men asked to take the vacant places 
showed unwillingness to do so. Hamilton Fish 
finally became Secretary of State, and George S. 
Boutwell Secretary of the Treasury, but the whole 
affair created a tempest of abuse and criticism 
that might have been avoided if Grant had been 
less secretive by nature, or better versed in the 
ways and temper of public men. He knew the 
army thoroughly, but he had yet to learn that peo- 
ple could not be commanded into office as soldiers 
are ordered to duty on the field. Criticism once 
aroused was not allowed to die down. He had 
demonstrated his inexperience, and thereafter 
every one was on the lookout for mistakes. Of- 
fice-seekers swarmed around him. He had a 
theory that men who asked for office were usually 
unfit to hold it, and for every friend he made he 
made at least ten enemies by his manner to those 
he turned away. His loyalty to old friends in- 
spired him to appoint some whom others con- 
sidered unworthy; and this same loyalty 
combined with his inborn instinct to fight 
things out on one line ''if it took all summer," 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 323 

led him to persist in courses of action that were 
unwise. Once convinced, however, that a friend 
was false or a policy wrong, he was iron in his 
disapproval. He respected an open enemy, but 
treachery and falsehood filled him with im- 
placable wrath. 

Of course he was criticized socially as well as 
politically. For several weeks after the inaugura- 
tion he and his family continued to live in their 
own home in Washington, though all official 
duties and ceremonies were performed at the 
Executive Mansion. Grant hated the ceremonies, 
but submitted to them as part of the office, just as 
he submitted to the regulation evening dress and 
white tie of civil life, which he despised. Gradu- 
ally it came to him that these and other conven- 
tionalities stood for something in his new life, 
after which he adhered rigidly to the etiquette of 
his position, even to the matter of selecting his 
dinner guests and deciding how they should be 
seated at table. He became less shy and con- 
strained in manner, but though he grew in social 
graces all through his presidency, he never 
reached the polished elegance of the man of the 
world. He had dignity and reserve and com- 
posure, and a kindly wish not to injure the feel- 
ings of his guests, which are good substitutes, but 
his social critics shook their heads and said: 



324 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

"What a pity we cannot have a gentleman in the 
White House!" They could not appreciate the 
relief with which he went back to his democratic 
habits in the hours when "off duty," so to speak— 
the long walks that he took unattended, or long 
drives in a light buggy, himself handling the 
reins ; or why he should like to linger and watch 
the boys who in those days played ball in the "lot" 
south of the White House. Occasionally he 
joined in the game for a few minutes, to their 
delight, for they loved him, and being democratic 
by nature of their youth, had no notion that he 
might be doing an "ungentlemanly" thing in tak- 
ing part in their fun. 

Grant's own family was very little in evidence 
at the White House. His father and sister at- 
tended the inauguration, and occasionally old 
Jesse came to feast his eyes upon his illustrious 
son, but there was a sturdy pride in the old man 
which forbade his forcing himself upon the social 
life of the White House. He put up at a modest 
hotel. The two would have a talk and a drive 
together, and then he would go back to the little 
western town where he was postmaster. He died 
during Grant's second term, the only man who 
has lived to see his son twice elected President. 
Grant's mother never saw him in his exalted sta- 
tion. When asked if she were not proud of his 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 325 

being" President, slie would murmur some unin- 
telligible word. If one were bold enough to ask 
if she did not wish to go to Washington, she 
would look at her questioner with the same ex- 
pressionless face that her son could show to 
people who pried into affairs that were not their 
concern. Who can tell if it was pride, or shyness, 
or a fear of discrediting him in his new sur- 
roundings that filled her mother-heart? She was 
more Grant than Grant himself. 

The fire of criticism and opposition never 
slackened. No man can hope to be President and 
please everybody. Grant was accused of almost 
all the crimes on the political calendar, from ap- 
pointing too many of his wife's relations to office, 
to an eagerness to debase his own great military 
skill and the immense army of American ex- 
soldiers in a war of foreign conquest. This about 
the man w^ho bent all his energies toward disband- 
ing the mighty host in 1865! He tried to bring 
about a treaty that would make the island of San 
Domingo part of the United States. In this he 
was simply carrying out the policy of several 
former Presidents, but it was enough to base the 
story upon. That he followed his usual practice 
of silence, and did not take party leaders into his 
confidence, was another cause for grievance, 
especially to men like Charles Sumner, who 



326 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

thought they had a right to know all that went on 
in high political circles. Charles Sumner, being 
vain as well as able, was particularly aggrieved 
because Grant paid scant attention to his recom- 
mendations for office, and became the most violent 
of all the President's critics. 

So, with the handicap of his inexperience, and 
his reticence, and his inability to see through the 
maze of politics as clearly as through the smoke 
of battle, Grant struggled on to the end of his first 
term. He made mistakes, serious ones, as he was 
willing to admit, but they were mistakes of under- 
standing and not of intention ; and if his reputa- 
tion had not been so great, criticism of his acts 
would have been much less. A less famous Presi- 
dent, indeed, might be remembered for the suc- 
cesses of his administration, instead of being 
abused for its failures. 

As the time drew near for the next presidential 
election it became clear that in spite of all this 
abuse. Grant's place was secure in the hearts of 
the people. Senator Sumner, determined to de- 
feat him for reelection, if defeat were possible, 
summed up all the charges against him in a long 
and bitter speech delivered from his place in the 
Senate chamber, most violent in its expressions, 
and nicely timed to work him harm. In the streets 
the news flew from lip to lip: "Sumner is attack- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 327 

ing Grant!" and crowds rushed into the Senate 
galleries to hear. 

According to Senator Sumner, Grant's one de- 
sire was to make himself a national dictator, and 
to keep and hold power all the days of his life. To 
that end he had turned the Executive Mansion 
into a military headquarters. His interest in re- 
form and good government was only a mask. He 
used his great power only to reward friends and 
punish enemies. He was lazy and self-indulgent; 
loitered at the seaside, rode in palace cars, piled up 
for himself ill-gotten wealth, had made a failure 
of diplomatic relations abroad and a muddle of 
affairs at home, chose his cabinet in defiance of all 
established rules, and instead of entering office 
humbly, had dared to say, "The responsibilities of 
the position I feel, but accept them without fear." 

The eloquent Senator overreached himself. 
The wounded self-love that lay at the bottom of 
the attack was too plainly visible. His speech 
became the text and sum of all that Grant's oppo- 
nents could say, but when the Republican con- 
vention met in Philadelphia on June 5 and 6, 
1872, it once more gave every vote at its com- 
mand for the man whose critics called him the 
"dummy," the "butcher," and the "American 
Caesar." Henry Wilson of Massachusetts was 
nominated for Vice-President, and whatever may 



328 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

have been expressed in party platforms, the real 
issue of the campaign was whether or not Grant 
should continue in office. The campaign was even 
more bitter than that of 1868, for in addition to 
all the abusive things that were said and invented 
at that time, every disappointed office-seeker and 
discredited politician added his bit of personal 
venom to the general account. 

There were three other sets of candidates. 
Horace Greeley, the venerable editor of the "New 
York Tribune," and B. Gratz Brown of Missouri, 
were the candidates for President and Vice-Presi- 
dent of the "Liberal Republican" and Democratic 
parties, who united their wide political differences 
in the cry, "Anything to beat Grant!" The 
"Straight-out Democrats," unable to bring them- 
selves to labor for Horace Greeley, who had op- 
posed them actively in speech and print through 
the whole of his long and energetic life, nominated 
Charles O'Conner of New York, and John Quincy 
Adams of Massachusetts, both of whom speedily 
declined the honor ; while the Liberal Republicans 
who felt themselves too liberal to enter into an 
alliance with Democrats, got together and sug- 
gested Wm. S. Groesbeck of Ohio for President, 
and Frederick Law Olmstead of New York for 
Vice-President. 

Grant as usual kept silence. The people must 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 329 

again "judge for themselves." They did so in no 
uncertain terms. Grant's majority over Greeley 
on election day was over three quarters of a mil- 
lion—more than double his majority over Sey- 
mour four years before. It is a little hard to 
believe that the people of the country would have 
gone mad and committed such an act of folly if 
Grant's course had been as evil as his detractors 
would have us think. 

On March 4, 1873, he again stood on the east 
portico of the Capitol, and swore, in the presence 
of a vast throng to "preserve, protect, and de- 
fend" the Constitution of the United States ; and 
cannon boomed and people shouted when he 
ended his inaugural, although not one man in a 
hundred had heard a single word. The day was 
mercilessly cold. An icy wind beat down the 
decorations that had been raised along the line of 
march in his honor, and snatched the sentences 
out of his mouth almost before they were uttered. 
It must have reminded him of the storm that 
raged when the soldiers were on their way to 
Donelson. Those who made auguries from the 
sunshine at his first inauguration were too chilled 
to indulge in their fruitless occupation. That 
night men wore overcoats and even hats in the in- 
augural ball-room, and the splendor of the ladies 
was eclipsed beyond recognition under countless 



330 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

layers of wraps. It was the '^show business" un- 
der difficulties, and it is not to be wondered at 
that the presidential party arrived late and de- 
parted as soon as courtesy permitted from this 
frigid entertainment. 

The President looked older, ten years older, 
than he had at his previous inauguration. He 
had also grown heavier. The address that he 
read in the icy wind after taking his oath of office 
showed more practice in the art of public speak- 
ing and writing; but the spirit was the same. He 
still wanted to govern justly and peaceably, and 
knowing his wishes to be honest, was still willing 
to accept the responsibility. In closing he re- 
ferred very frankly to the torrent of abuse that 
had swept over him during the campaign— 
''abuse and slanders scarcely ever equaled in 
political history," he said, "which to-day I feel 
that I can afford to disregard, in view of your 
verdict, which I gratefully accept as my vindica- 
tion." 

Happy in the people's vindication he began his 
second term of office. There was, of course, no 
change of policy. He simply went along on the 
old lines. 

The South was still a seething mass of discord 
— negroes distrusting the whites, whites despis- 
ing the negroes, and hating with a deadly hatred 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 331 

northern men who took up their homes among 
them after the war. "Carpet-baggers," these 
latter were called, and as soon as the military 
governments were withdrawn, any attempt, real 
or imaginary, at a political partnership between 
these interlopers and the newly freed blacks was 
met with deeds of violence and bloodshed. The 
negroes were ignorant, and their "carpet-bag" 
leaders often unscrupulous. It w^as only natural 
that the men who had ruled before the war should 
try to assert themselves, but the methods they 
chose were as evil as the practices they tried to 
put down. Bands of masked horsemen rode about 
the country at night, administering what they 
called "justice," and leaving behind them a trail of 
horse-whipped blacks, burned cabins, and trees 
bearing a burden of dangling corpses, as evidence 
of their wish and ability to restore good govern- 
ment. Grant was blamed for this condition of 
things, and equally blamed for his vigorous at- 
tempt to put it down. Congress gave him unusual 
powers to cope with the disorder. He sternly 
insisted that all men must keep the peace, and 
announced that if he should be forced to call upon 
the military, it would prove "no child's play." 
The malcontents knew that such words from him 
were not to be lightly regarded, and the reign of 

violence came to an end. 
20 



332 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

With equal firmness he insisted that all gov- 
ernment debts must be paid in coin, or in other 
money that was worth as much as gold or silver. 
This caused him to veto what was known as the 
Inflation Act, a bill intended to relieve the hard 
times that had come upon the country in 1873, 
by the simple expedient of issuing paper money to 
the face value of one hundred million dollars, 
without anything more than the government's 
word to prove that it was worth that or any other 
sum. This would, in effect, be paying debts with 
other promises to pay. It had been necessary to 
resort to such measures during the war, but from 
his first hour as President Grant had insisted 
that the country ought to go back to the good old 
way of paying its debts in money like gold, which 
had a value of its own, quite apart from any the 
government could give it. 

The other view was, however, very popular, 
and great pressure was brought upon him to sign 
the bill. Unwilling to act against the expressed 
wish of Congress unless he felt compelled to do 
so. Grant sat down and tried to write a message 
approving the bill ; but the more he tried to state 
reasons in its favor the less convincing they be- 
came, and the stronger appeared the arguments 
against it — until finally, assured of the justice of 
his former views, he tore up what he had written. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 333 

and sent a short message vetoing it instead. This 
one action of his shows better than a whole vol- 
ume of explanation the true man behind his 
silences and his apparent self-will. 

Grant's trials as President had begun with his 
cabinet. His cabinet was destined to bring scan- 
dal and disgrace upon the closing days of his 
administration. After the troubles at the South 
had died down, and his sturdy regard for right as 
he saw it had silenced a large number of his critics, 
it was learned that dishonesty had eaten like a 
canker through many of the departments of the 
civil government. Great frauds were discovered 
in collecting the tax on whisky, and it was insin- 
uated that the President was not altogether 
innocent. Grant indignantly indorsed upon the 
letter which brought him this news : ''Referred 
to the Secretary of the Treasury. . . . Let no 
guilty man escape if it can be avoided. Be spe- 
cially vigilant against all who insinuate that they 
have high influence to protect, or to protect them. 
No personal considerations should stand in the 
way of performing a public duty." 

Investigation disclosed the fact that many in 
high places were concerned, even the President's 
private secretary. General O. E. Babcock. Also, 
that one of the chief offenders, Supervisor J. A. 
McDonald, was a friend of Grant's and often seen 



334 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

in his company. The opponents of the adminis- 
tration were wild with glee, and lost no oppor- 
tunity to air the scandal. Grant appointed 
ex-Senator John B. Henderson, a violent critic 
of his administration, prosecuting attorney, in 
order to forestall all doubt of his wish to have the 
matter thoroughly investigated, but when Hen- 
derson went out of his way to attack the Presi- 
dent's honor, every member of the cabinet voted 
to have him removed. Mr. Broadhead, a Demo- 
crat, was appointed in his stead, and the trial went 
on, but the change had been impolitic, and all the 
criticism that went before was as nothing to the 
storm of denunciation let loose upon him now. 
Men seemed eager to see Grant stripped of all his 
honors and wearing convict's dress. Friends and 
adherents fell away from him on all sides. Even 
his own party began to doubt him. With stub- 
born loyalty he stood by Babcock, and kept him 
as his secretary until the day of the trial. At the 
trial he gave testimony in his favor. The others 
were convicted and sent to prison. Babcock was 
acquitted, largely because of the President's 
testimony, and people claimed that Grant had 
perjured himself to save a friend. But in spite of 
all the efforts made to bring disgrace upon him, 
not one bit of direct evidence was unearthed to 
show that he knew about or had countenanced 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 335 

these frauds. His bitterest enemies were forced 
to admit that he meant all he said in his order, 
"Let no guilty man escape." 

Scarcely was Babcock acquitted when it was 
charged that Secretary of War Belknap, one of 
the most popular men in the administration, was 
receiving bribes for appointing men to office. 
Belknap, in an agony of remorse, admitted to 
Grant that this was true, and begged to be al- 
lowed to resign, so as not to bring further dis- 
grace upon the administration. Grant consented; 
but the critics declared that this had an evil look. 
Grant's friends, on the other hand, pointed out 
that he had most openly desired investigation, 
that he had answered a cabinet officer who hinted 
at being able to tell things if courtesy did not 
forbid, with the stern injunction to speak out, 
and the statement that he wished all cabinet mem- 
bers and ex-cabinet members to testify on the 
same subject. "Do your worst," he had seemed 
to say to his accusers, and they had not been able 
to lay one charge against his name. As for Bel- 
knap, Grant was not the only man deceived in his 
character. He had been one of the best-loved 
men in public life. 

It was, of course, absurd to denounce Grant 
for the sins of his party followers. He was too 
straightforward and single-minded himself to 



336 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

imagine such double-dealing on the part of men 
he knew and trusted. In spite of all his experi- 
ence, and all the hard knocks of his varied life, 
something of the crystal clearness and simplicity 
of his boyish trust in human nature remained. 
The old story of the horse-trade comes to mind. 
He had learned to keep a dogged silence, and not 
to tell everything that was in his mind as in that 
far-off time, but to the end of his days he seemed 
unable to learn that there were people with a 
talent for deceit as great as his for straightfor- 
ward honesty. That was the chief reason of his 
failure to meet the highest requirements of the 
office of President— his absolute inability to com- 
prehend the complicated and involved game of 
cross-purposes called politics. His genius was. 
undoubtedly military, and not for the more subtle 
problems of peace. Yet, as some one has pointed 
out, the acts of his two administrations have not 
had to be undone. Criticism raged about him 
and abuse was showered upon him in a way to 
make the stoutest heart quake, but the principles 
for which he labored were the ones that have 
stood the test of time. 

He governed in a period of exceeding difficulty. 
The South was smarting with defeat, the North 
demoralized in politics and business by the ad- 
ministration of President Johnson. One of 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 337 

Grant's hiog^raphers has said that even the arch- 
angel Michael, trying to govern just then by 
heavenly law, would have found himself at fault. 
Grant was not an angel. He was not even an "all- 
around" man. Certain sides of his character had 
never been developed. But he was a great man— 
preeminently great in war— and the list of 
measures he favored as President proves that his 
record in peace is an honorable one. 

It was while he was President that the first Civil 
Service Commission was appointed. He urged 
building a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. 
He favored treating the Indians peaceably, and 
in time making citizens of them. It was while he 
was in office that the Weather Bureau was created, 
and under him that the United States became 
a member of the Universal Postal Union. Dur- 
ing his term of office the Fifteenth Amendment to 
the Constitution, which declares that no citizen's 
right to vote shall be denied "on account of race, 
color, or previous condition of servitude," became 
the law of the land. Violence was put down in 
the South, and he recommended restoring civil 
rights to the classes to whom it had been denied 
by the Fourteenth Amendment. He battled suc- 
cessfully to preserve the credit of our country, 
and pay its debts in honest money. He strove to 
restore American shipping to the place it once 



338 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

held in the commerce of nations. He wished to 
recognize and help the struggling independent 
government of Cuba. He favored improving 
Washington city, and making it a fitting capital 
of a great nation. He advocated establishing the 
principle that private property at sea shall not be 
subject to capture in time of war ; and, what is the 
crowning triumph of his administration, the 
greatest warrior of our day took the longest step 
that had been taken up to that time toward settling 
disputes by peaceful means instead of by the 
sword. 

This was by the Treaty of Washington. The 
United States had many claims against Great 
Britain, growing out of her friendliness to the 
South during the war. England had not formally 
recognized the Confederate States, but had given 
them every aid and advantage in her power short 
of that, with the result that the war had been 
prolonged and much shipping destroyed. These 
claims, all together, were known as the Alabama 
Claims, the Alabama being the name of one of 
the vessels concerned. England finally admitted 
that she had been wrong, but refused to make 
amends, on the ground that it was beneath her 
dignity. Just before Grant came into office Presi- 
dent Johnson concluded a treaty on the subject so 
humiliating to the United States that the Senate 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 339 

very properly declined to ratify it. When Grant 
became President there was a sudden and most 
gratifying change in the attitude of England. 
Whether the Queen's ministers feared the great 
General who was now at the head of affairs, or 
recognized that England's own interests de- 
manded a different policy, is of little moment. At 
that nation's own request negotiations were re- 
opened, and resulted in the Treaty of Washing- 
ton, by which it was agreed to submit the matter in 
dispute to competent judges, and to abide by their 
decision. The judgment went against England, 
and she paid a substantial sum to this country for 
the losses caused to our shipping. The victory 
lay, of course, not in the money involved, but in 
forcing England to admit her error, and to agree 
to this principle of arbitration as a means at once 
dignified and humane of settling disputes between 
nations. 

The scandal in Grant's cabinet came at a time 
most opportune for his enemies ; they were begin- 
ning to harp once more upon "Caesarism," and to 
claim that Grant meant to get himself elected to 
the presidency for the third time. Every tale 
that seemed to bear on his unfitness was hailed as 
a joyful aid in their campaign of slander. There 
was nothing in the Constitution to forbid his tak- 
ing a third term if it were offered to him, and it 



340 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

was not in his nature to speak on any subject until 
he had to do so. When the matter came up before 
the Pennsylvania State convention he thought the 
time had come to make his position clear, and 
wrote to the chairman, saying: "The idea that 
any man could elect himself President, or even 
nominate himself, is preposterous. Any man can 
destroy his chances for an office, but no one can 
force an election or even a nomination. I am not, 
nor have I ever been, a candidate for renomina- 
tion. I would not accept the nomination if it were 
tendered, unless it should come under such cir- 
cumstances as to make it an imperative duty- 
circumstances not likely to arise." 

Nor did they. Even if the scandal of the latter 
days of his administration had not occurred, the 
time had come for Grant to go out of office. Feel- 
ing in our country is strong against allowing one 
man to wield the vast power of President for too 
long a time. But though not a candidate. Grant 
was still easily the most important person in the 
United States, and the question of whom he fa- 
vored for his successor assumed great impor- 
tance. James G. Blaine was the most prominent 
aspirant, but he had many enemies, and Grant 
doubted if he could be nominated. Rutherford B. 
Hayes was another prominent man, and when it 
was known that both General Grant and General 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 341 

Sherman considered him a suitable man for the 
place, the contest narrowed down to him and 
Blaine. Hayes won the nomination, with Wm. 
A. Wheeler of New York for Vice-President. 
The Democrats chose Samuel J. Tilden of New 
York and Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana, and 
the contest was again very bitter. If the south- 
ern States voted for Tilden he would surely be 
elected. The temptation to fraud was very great, 
and it seemed likely that election day would be one 
of excitement if not of violence. Grant issued 
orders to General Sherman to see that the peace 
was kept at all costs, and the day passed more 
quietly than had been anticipated. It was after 
the results were partially known that the trouble 
began. The election was very close. Both sides 
claimed the victory, and each declared that its 
candidate and no other should be seated. A com- 
mission had finally to be appointed to determine 
the result. It decided in favor of Mr. Hayes by 
just one vote. There was much excited talk, and 
threats were made that he would never be allowed 
to take possession of an office to which, as the 
Democrats declared, he had not been elected. 
Grant was not much disturbed by this, or by the 
suggestion that Tilden be inaugurated in New 
York; but he was a soldier, and took all needful 
precautions. • He moved troops to the points 



342 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

where their services were most likely to be 
wanted, saw that arsenals were properly guarded, 
gave orders to place New York in a state of siege 
in case the Democrats should be foolish enough to 
attempt to inaugurate their candidate, and let it 
be known that he proposed to hold his office until 
his successor was legally and properly inaugu- 
rated. He did not intend to have two govern- 
ments, or to put up with any revolutionary folly. 
It was a return to warlike conditions, and his 
military mind met and promptly overcame them. 
He was the general again, and therefore at his 
best. 

The 4th of March fell on Sunday. On Satur- 
day, the 3d, he was present when Mr. Hayes 
privately took the oath of office ; and on Monday, 
the 5th, he rode with him in the same carriage to 
the Capitol where the public inauguration took 
place with a due amount of brass bands and 
shouting. If the Electoral Commission had de- 
clared Tilden elected he would have done the same 
as cordially for him. The office was neither per- 
sonal nor political, but national, as he justly said, 
and his one wish was to turn it over peaceably to 
his successor. That done, he retired thankfully 
into the role of private citizen. 



XVI 

THE GUEST OF KINGS 

GRANT'S boyish dream had been to travel and 
see the world. That was what reconciled 
him, it will be remembered, to the appointment to 
West Point. Now that he was through with the 
eight troublesome years in the White House he 
had earned a holiday, and he resolved to spend it 
in the way his early dreams had outlined. 

After bidding the new President and Mrs. 
Hayes welcome to the Executive Maftsion, Mr. 
and Mrs. Grant were driven to the house of Secre- 
tary Fish, where they remained for about a 
month, receiving many courtesies from officials 
and personal friends. Then they set out upon 
their travels. It was to England that they first 
turned their steps, for their daughter Ellen, or 
Nellie, the little girl who had slipped her hand 
into her father's while he was reading his first 
inaugural address, had grown up in the interval, 
and was married, and that was now her home. 
They sailed on the 17th of May, 1877, on the 
American steamer Indiana, and the honors and 



344 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

ovations that preceded their departure from 
Philadelphia, as well as the crowds that followed 
the ship down the harbor, testified to the good 
wishes that accompanied them. Grant had felt 
the criticism and coldness of his party friends 
deeply, and this manifestation of renewed regard 
after he laid down the cares of office gave him 
great delight. **Why," he said, "it is just as it 
was immediately after the war !" 

The crossing was a rough one, but he proved 
a good sailor, and the weight of sixteen years 
seemed to roll away as the voyage advanced. 
He traveled, of course, as a private citizen, but 
his reputation had preceded him. When the ship 
reached Liverpool crowds were waiting for him, 
the Mayor was on hand with an address of wel- 
come, and a committee of distinguished citizens 
bent on showing him the wonders of the town, 
hovered in the rear. 

This was but the beginning. It was plain that 
he could not escape into private citizenship. He 
was a public personage in spite of himself. At 
that distance the party disputes that had dark- 
ened his fame in his own country had not been 
heeded. The great facts of his career, his gener- 
alship, his two triumphant elections to the presi- 
dency, his having disbanded a vast army, and 
gained a notable victory for peace in the Treaty 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 345 

of Wasliinglon, outshone in tlieir rightful degree 
all the minor mistakes and quarrels of his ad- 
ministration. His journey was almost like a royal 
progress. Crowds closed about his carriage, 
mayors and corporations did him honor. Factory 
operatives left their spindles, and colliers climbed 
out of the black depths of the earth to see this 
man and hear him speak. For, to the amazement 
of his friends at home, he did speak. The silent 
Grant, who had gone through all the varied 
phases of his life with scarcely a public utterance, 
found his voice to answer addresses of welcome 
and respond to the toasts that were showered 
upon him with hearty good will. His little 
speeches were short and modest, but apt and to 
the point. He thanked the people for their unex- 
pectedly hearty welcome, disclaiming all thought 
of taking it to himself, but accepting it as being 
meant for his country rather than for him per- 
sonally. This, of course, endeared him yet more 
to his hearers. It was a welcome of the great 
middle class, however, for up to this time no per- 
son of exalted rank had taken part in the demon- 
stration. They waited to take their cue from 
royalty, but the tradespeople hurried to present 
addresses of welcome, and the workingmen to 
enjoy a "free hand-shaking" with the distin- 
guished visitor whom they regarded not only as a 



346 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

great man, but as one who had risen without the 
help of family or wealth from circumstances as 
humble as their own. They cheered him, not only 
for what he was, but as an example of what they 
or their children might one day become. 

Meantime grave discussions went on in court 
circles as to how the visitor ought to be received 
when he reached London. He was one of the 
most noted men on earth, but he had no official 
status, and no credentials, beyond a letter from 
the State Department at Washington to its rep- 
resentatives abroad, asking them to do what lay 
in their power to make his stay in Europe agree- 
able. At length it was decided to treat him as an 
ex-sovereign, with the honors due that lofty if 
fallen station. So the ex-woodchopper of the 
Gravois farm found himself involved in the mazes 
of court etiquette — invited to dinner by the 
Prince of Wales, "commanded" by the Queen to 
dine and pass the night at Windsor Castle, and 
bombarded with invitations from the lesser world 
of fashion and rank that follows the example set 
by royalty. Jealous eyes watched his treatment 
in these high places, lest some affront be offered 
his Republican unsophistication in the all-impor- 
tant details of his place at table or the number of 
minutes the sovereign engaged him in conversa- 
tion. Curious eyes watched from the other side 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 347 

to note any mistake or awkwardness he or his 
wife mig'ht commit in their unaccustomed sur- 
roundings; but by this time the "show business" 
had fewer terrors for Grant — and common sense 
and simphcity are capital guides to conduct even 
before a throne. 

Grant had gone abroad without any definite 
plans, saying smilingly that he would travel as far 
and stay as long as his money held out. What- 
ever route he took he meant to follow quietly and 
unostentatiously as a private citizen of the United 
States ; but his experience in England proved that 
this was not possible. When he wished to visit 
Paris he was asked by the American Minister to 
postpone his journey for a time until French 
politics, then at white heat, cooled and quieted a 
bit, so that he might enter the town without being 
suspected of taking sides. He took a little tour on 
the continent, through Belgium and the Black 
Forest, and down into Switzerland, then to Scot- 
land and back to London before he could enter the 
French capital. On his arrival in October Gam- 
betta and President MacMahon met him with the 
greatest cordiality, and the French people, if not 
so enthusiastic as the British, filled his days and 
kept him more busily occupied than when he was 
in the White House. 

After France came Italy, then he passed on to 
21 



348 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

Egypt and the Holy Land for the winter, then to 
Greece and Constantinople, through Italy again, 
lingering in Rome and Florence and Milan, to 
Paris— from Paris to Holland, and from Holland 
into Germany, whose people he was eager to 
study. From Germany to Denmark, Norway and 
Sweden, then to Russia and Austria and Spain 
and Portugal, and back once more to England and 
Ireland— a great tour of the kingdoms of Europe. 
At every frontier the question of how he was to 
be received came up. Some countries solved it in 
one way, some in another. If the idea of the ex- 
sovereign did not appeal to them, there was his 
General's rank and reputation to fall back upon. 
But whatever the name by which they called it, 
their welcome had a heartiness that showed how 
great was the interest felt in him. Kings and 
queens invited him to be their guest. Palaces and 
royal pleasure-boats and state coaches were 
placed at his service, and everywhere his hosts, 
knowing him to be a great general, arranged re- 
views and military pageants to show him their 
finest soldiers— which Grant, poor man, tired of 
war, avoided seeing whenever possible. 

In vain he protested that he was more of a 
farmer than a warrior, that he had never fought a 
battle willingly, and never left the army without 
joy. His hosts marveled at his attitude and were 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 349 

puzzled by his indifference, but gallantly deter- 
mined to do him honor, ordered out more and 
more soldiers, until he actually went around the 
world to the sound of drums and holiday guns, 
lie probably saw more kinds of troops than any 
man who has ever lived, and responded to more 
different military salutes. It became a joke with 
the members of his suite that he would go ten 
miles out of his way to "see a new kind of plow, 
or to avoid seeing a gun or a soldier." 

He was an untiring sightseer, determined to 
miss nothing that he ought to look at, but frankly 
more interested in the industrial customs and 
resources of a country than in its rulers or its art. 
His happiest moments were when he could escape 
from court functions and the well-meant but tire- 
some salutations of burgomasters and civil dig- 
nitaries, to stroll through narrow city streets or 
in country lanes among the common people, seeing 
how they performed their daily tasks, and finding 
out what they thought and felt. Why the peas- 
ants in some lands chose to yoke the great 
cream-colored oxen in a way different from that 
he was used to in Missouri, was a problem of 
greater interest to 1pm than any question of 
precedence at court ; and the way of an Egyptian 
fellah with his water-wheel of greater moment 
than any royal tomb or graven image. All his 



350 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

training had been in the practical things of life. 
Esthetics had absolutely no place in his world. 
He liked the big things in nature, and in art he 
liked only the things so tremendous that they 
resembled nature — the Pyramids, or the most 
stately cathedrals. The more delicate beauties 
of pictures and sculpture escaped him entirely. 
He could feel the beauty as well as the grandeur 
of a noble mountain view, but the genius of 
Michelangelo or of Raphael left him utterly un- 
touched. 

It was, indeed, the same way with literature. 
When he read it was for facts, never to enjoy 
style, or for the mere pleasure of reading. 

Of course he did not like the peasants just be- 
cause they were common, or dislike noted people 
because of their wealth and position. It was al- 
ways the person and not the rank that attracted 
him. In Spain the one man that he wanted to 
meet was Emilio Castelar, the patriot and orator, 
who had been President for a few months during 
the short and troubled time that Spain tried to be 
a republic. In Egypt he met Henry M. Stanley, 
just back from his explorations in the wilds of 
Africa; in Berlin, Prince Bismarck, Chancellor 
of the German Empire, with whom he developed 
a sympathetic intimacy. With Wagner, another 
noted German, he did not get on so well. The 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 351 

great musician called upon hini at Heidelberfj^, but 
there was little in common between the man who 
wrote Tristan and Isolde, and the man who 
thought he knew Yankee Doodle, but could never 
recognize Hail to the Chief, though it had been 
played at him with unfailing regularity ever since 
the fall of \'icksburg. Each great man was dumb 
in the presence of the other — as dumb almost as 
the nameless Roman warrior whose grave was 
opened at Homburg, while the living general 
looked down in silence on the weapons and 
trinkets and fast-crumbling skeleton of his long- 
dead brother in arms. 

Everywhere, as in England, Grant answered 
the speeches of welcome, and everywhere, if he 
could, he escaped the parades and reviews. He 
was always pleased when somebody else in the 
party was mistaken for him, and he was thus 
allowed to get a more objective view of the recep- 
tion than was otherwise possible. He was best 
pleased when he could wander at will observing 
the people. If he got separated from his friends 
and lost in a tangle of strange streets as was 
sometimes the case, there was usually a cab within 
call to take him home. And if, as on one occasion, 
he forgot the name of his hotel, the cab driver 
was still his salvation. He could not bring him- 
self, even then, to tell his name, but he asked if 



352 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

the man knew where General Grant was stopping. 
The driver assured him in fragments of several 
languages that he knew all about General Grant, 
whereupon the General, throwing himself upon 
the cushions with a sigh of relief, said, "Take me 
to his hotel," and the day was saved. 
' Thus the great tour of Europe was made — a 
succession of ovations from beginning to end — 
men of birth, and men of deeds, and the countless 
thousands who tilled the soil, all doing him honor, 
those born to the purple because he had worn it, 
the men of deeds because he had achieved great 
things, the men of toil because in the past he had 
been one of themselves. 

When it was ended came a trip to the Orient- 
through the Red Sea and on to India, Burma, 
Siam, Cochin China, China, and Japan — where 
the same consideration and the same honors were 
shown him, clad in different guise. The shabby, 
sumptuous, bewildering East spread its treasures 
before him as the Occident had done. Mahara- 
jahs sent their elephants and sedan chairs in place 
of royal yachts and palace cars. Servants in 
flowing robes drew near to supply quite unimag- 
ined wants. Interpreters translated the remarks 
of gorgeous rulers whose turbans were fastened 
with jewels worth a king's ransom, but whose 
power was not always worth ten British guns; 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 353 

and for a backs^round there were pagan temples 
instead of cathedrals, strange beasts of burden, 
unfamiliar trees, and teeming, scantily fed, 
brown peasant-folk who stood and silently 
watched him out of unconvinced, unfathomable 
eyes. They could not understand why such a 
great man should go about in plain, undecorated 
garments — or why, indeed, he should come at all. 
Their rulers did everything that courtesy and 
Oriental imagination could contrive to give Grant 
pleasure. There were endless ceremonies of re- 
ception and farewell, which bored as well as inter- 
ested him ; nautch dances at which he looked with 
resigned despair; offers of tiger-hunts and pig- 
sticking that he declined; and by one devoted 
Indian potentate, an effort to lose a game of bil- 
liards to his distinguished guest — a bit of hos- 
pitality rendered quite impossible by the General's 
erratic playing. There were feats of horseman- 
ship that left the champion of West Point frankly 
amazed; exhibitions of wise old war elephants; 
and reviews of soldiers in uniforms like nothing 
short of a fancy ball gone mad. And once in a 
while a strangely familiar note would be sounded 
amid all this orientalism; as when the girls in the 
mission school at Lucknow sang John Brown s 
Body, or, in the midst of a Japanese banquet a 
dish of orthodox and irreproachable Boston baked 



354 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

beans made its appearance. These were all little 
things, but they showed how anxious his hosts 
were to please him. At Canton it was proposed 
to please him by closing all the houses and lining 
the streets with troops as for an emperor's visit ; 
but Grant let it be known that he preferred to see 
the people, so there as elsewhere there were 
crowds — silent, hushed crowds that watched with- 
out a sound as his sedan chair was carried past. 

In the East as well as in Europe he held long 
and interesting talks with the foremost statesmen 
and clearest thinkers of their time. In China he 
saw much of Li Hung Chang, who "did not wish 
to meet him formally, but to know and talk with 
him," a wish he brought to fulfilment to the happi- 
ness of both men. Many were the talks they had 
about the progress and future of China, and the 
part the country of each was to play in the history 
of the world. Li Hung Chang broke through the 
traditions of all time and had his wife give an 
entertainment in honor of Mrs. Grant, with a 
dinner and a Chinese Punch and Judy show, while 
the tall Viceroy looked on over the shoulders of 
others from afar to see how the ladies got on. In 
Japan, the last country he visited, that mysterious 
"Son of Heaven," the Mikado himself, came to 
see him "informally" in the royal palace that was 
placed at his disposal. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 357 

It was a very wonderful journey, perhaps (he 
most wonderful, taking into account its extent 
and the variety of things and people he saw, and 
the courtesies offered him, that it has hecn (he 
fortune of any man to make. When it was over 
he set sail from Yokohama on the steamer City of 
Tokio, and about sunset on September 20, 1879, 
two years and four months after leaving Phila- 
delphia, steamed into the Golden Gate to find the 
shipping bright with flags, guns booming, steam- 
whistles blowing, great ships black with people 
coming out to meet him, and the city of San Fran- 
cisco echoing with hearty American cheers. The 
first man to grasp his hand was his son Ulysses, 
who had come from his home in the East. After 
him came a committee of invitation, with his old 
friend General McDowell at the head. The 
Mayor of San Francisco was not far behind, and 
the greeting and the speechmaking and the boom- 
ing of guns went on just as it had done across the 
seas— but with a difference, for this was a wel- 
come home. In San Francisco there was a review 
that he did not object to witnessing, a review of 
his old soldiers who had made their homes in 
California since the war— and yet another, of five 
thousand school children who threw roses at his 
feet. 

Some of the people who greeted him had known 



358 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

him in the old days when he left the Pacific coast 
in poverty and disappointment. Whatever may 
have been the truth about that unhappy time, 
Grant never cherished feelings of bitterness to- 
ward the country where he had fared so ill. He 
had indeed a real affection for it, and now that he 
was back again he was anxious to visit all the 
familiar places and see for himself the changes a 
quarter of a century had brought about. After a 
few days in San Francisco he went up to Portland 
and Vancouver to visit "the old fort," and then, 
by a route that embraced many of the large west- 
ern towns, turned homeward toward the East. 

The flood of greetings and huzzas swept with 
him across the country, and to the amazement of 
his old friends the General answered the speeches 
of welcome with speeches of his own. "When I 
was in Europe I had to speak," he said, "and hav- 
ing done so, it seemed to me it would be very un- 
civil to refuse the folks at home." He did not like 
to do it, but he had found that he could. His 
friends were pleased to see that he thought as 
much of the "folks at home" as before he went 
away. So far as they could discover he was in 
no way spoiled by flattery, and his fund of com- 
mon sense was as great as ever. "General, since 
you came to the coast business has revived, 
money flows freely, and the people are all hap- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 359 

pier," some one told him. "T p;-iiess wheat g'oing 
up thirty cents a cental has more to do with it 
than I have," was the matter-of-fact reply. 

"We will make you President," was a cry 
heard again and again. To this he made no an- 
swer. His friends were thinking of it seriously. 
They had urged him to remain abroad a few 
months longer, and time his home-coming with 
the meeting of the Republican national conven- 
tion, sure that the enthusiasm of his welcome 
would make him a triumphant candidate. Grant 
refused to be influenced by their suggestion. If 
the American people wanted him to be President 
again, well and good, they could elect him ; but he 
did not propose to have them tricked into a nomi- 
nation by any connivance on his part. He came 
home when he saw fit ; and when they cried, "We 
will make you President!" he reentered his old 
stronghold of silence and uttered never a word. 
Personally he felt that he was better qualified for 
the office than ever before. He had eight years 
of experience, and his recent journey had given 
him an insight into foreign governments and 
policies that he had never before possessed. The 
people who had objected to a third continuous 
term could not make the same objection to his re- 
suming the office after a lapse of four years — but, 
it was for the people to say. 



36o THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

He went to Galena, where again there were 
triumphal arches, and where old friends and 
neighbors gave him a welcome that brought tears 
to his eyes. That winter he traveled in Cuba and 
Mexico, and on his return through the southern 
States encountered the warmest and most whole- 
souled welcome. A committee from Vicksburg 
met him in New Orleans to ask him to visit their 
town and stay as long as he would. "I shall be 
glad to go to Vicksburg," he answered, thinking 
with a smile of the day when he had to break into 
the place by force. Wherever he went in the 
country that had once been hostile all was now 
friendliness. The opposition journals were forced 
to admit that he had never been so popular or so 
dangerous to their plans, and they raised a cry 
against this "hero-worship" that pointed straight 
toward imperialism and would surely lead the 
country to ruin. 

There were other candidates in the Republican 
party, and they felt that Grant had had his turn, 
and ought not to deprive them of theirs. It be- 
came evident that the real struggle for the presi- 
dency would take place in the convention when it 
met in Chicago on the 26. of June. Grant had 
more votes pledged to him than any other candi- 
date, but everybody knew that the nomination 
could not be unanimous, as it had been twice be- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 361 

fore. His friends hoped that he mie^ht win on the 
second ballot. Others were sorry to see him try 
at all. He did nothing to help or hinder, hut 
remained quietly in Galena. Young Ulysses 
Grant came from New York to be with his father 
durinq- the hours of suspense. The first news 
that reached them was of uncontrolled enthusiasm 
in the convention when his name was proposed. 
Grant, who was with his son in a friend's office, 
rose abruptly, saying, ''Come, Buck, let 's go 
home." Outside in the street after they had walked 
a way in silence, he sighed and said, "I am afraid 
I am going to be nominated." The heart of his 
son leaped for joy at the words. He had feared 
his father would be bitterly disappointed in case 
he failed — and he still saw the chance of failure. 
It took many ballots to settle the result. Grant 
had 304 votes on the first ballot. On the thirty- 
sixth, when Garfield was finally nominated, he 
had 306. The faithfulness of his supporters won 
for them the name of "the Old Guard." John 
Sherman, brother of the general, was also a 
candidate, and during the struggle a telegram 
came saying the Sherman men were willing to 
vote for Grant if the latter would promise to give 
Sherman a place in his cabinet. In an instant the 
old warrior's indignation was on fire. 'T will not 
consent to any agreement in order to secure the 



362 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

nomination for President of the United States," 
he repHed, and the Sherman men made their bar- 
gain elsewhere. 

When he heard that Garfield was nominated 
Grant brushed the ashes from his cigar. "Gar- 
field is a good man," he said rising. "I am glad 
of it. Good night, gentlemen," and walked away. 
To show his good will he did what he had never 
done before. He took an active part in the cam- 
paign, making political speeches and doing every- 
thing in his power to bring about the election of 
his successful rival. 



XVII 

HIS LAST BRAVE FIGHT 

SHORTLY after Garfield's election Grant pur- 
chased a house in East Sixty-sixth Street, and 
went to live in New York. His sons were already 
settled there, and he and his wife wished to be near 
them. He also felt that he must do something to 
earn money. His fortune was not large enough 
to enable him to live in the style to which both he 
and Mrs. Grant had become accustomed, and 
which their position seemed to demand. A third 
reason for the change was that he craved action. 
After a life of intensest care and responsibility it 
did not seem possible for him to settle down to the 
quiet routine of a country gentleman, with no 
interests except his crops, and no duties beyond 
those of providing food and shelter for his family 
and his live stock. 

When his friends learned thai he meant to 
enter business in Wall Street they were distressed, 
for they felt that he was not fitted by nature, and 
certainly not by training, for such an enterprise. 

36J 



364 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

But Grant was not the man to be turned from his 
purpose by mere advice. Pohtics had been closed 
to him. War was fortunately at an end. There 
seemed to be nothing left but the activity of trade, 
and perhaps he had a wish to show his admirers 
that in this too he was able to win and hold a high 
place. He was very careful about the use to be 
made of his great name. The presidency of the 
Nicaraguan canal was offered to him, but he 
declined. He accepted the same office for the 
Mexican Southern Railway only on condition that 
he receive no salary and own no stock. 

His son Ulysses had become connected with a 
young and highly successful man named Ferdi- 
nand Ward, one of the geniuses of trade at whose 
touch everything turns to gold. Grant had un- 
limited faith in his son's judgment. Ward's 
private life and financial standing appeared 
equally unexceptionable, and the business secure 
and perfectly honest. The General invested all 
the money he had, about $100,000, with them, and 
became a "silent partner" ; but he did this only on 
the understanding that no government contracts 
should be handled. Such business might be per- 
fectly lawful, but he did not wish his name con- 
nected with any transactions that the most critical 
might call in question. J. D. Fish, the president 
of the Marine National Bank, was a fourth part- 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 365 

ner, and with the name of Grant and the mone\ 
of the Marine Bank at its back, the new firm at 
once took a high standing. Its credit was un- 
questioned, and its dividends large and frequent. 
The books of the firm were open to the General's 
inspection, but he had nO knowledge of its busi- 
ness details. His son, who was a lawyer, attended 
to certain parts of the business, but left the 
financial management in the hands of his abler 
partner. 

All went on prosperously. The General had 
occupation in his railroad presidency, and a suffi- 
cient income from the firm of Grant and Ward. 
He told a friend in confidence that he was worth 
a million dollars, and frankly rejoiced in his suc- 
cess. Then out of a clear sky the blow fell. One 
day in early May, 1884, Ward disappeared. The 
Marine Bank closed its doors; and it was found 
that Fish and the young money king had been 
engaged in speculations and deals about which 
the Grants knew nothing. There were other sets 
of books that they had never seen, and huge debts, 
the very existence of which had been kept a secret 
between Fish and Ward. In a single hour 
Grant's dream of opulence tumbled about him. 
Instead of being a millionaire he and all his peo- 
ple were penniless. One son was a partner in the 
firm. Another was its agent. A third had de- 



22 



366 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

posited all his savings in the bank with which his 
father had been connected. Other members of 
the family and personal friends had brought him 
their money to invest. Even this was not all. It 
was found that Grant's great name had been used 
to decoy people into the questionable transactions 
that Fish and Ward carried on without his know- 
ledge. The people who had been duped would not 
believe his innocence in this regard ; so shame and 
scandal were added to misfortune. 

He learned the truth from his son in the office 
of the company, when the shock of discovery was 
yet so fresh that the younger man scarcely knew 
how harshly he told it. 

"Grant and Ward have failed, and Ward has 
fled," he said. 

The old General, lame and on crutches from a 
fall he had suffered some months before, had just 
come in. The two faced each other for a few 
seconds, eye to eye, the elder reading to the very 
bottom the message his son's words only faintly 
conveyed. Then, without a change of expression 
he turned and hobbled slowly to his own office on 
the floor above, to be alone with this stupendous 
blow. 

He bore it, as he had borne the other afflictions 
of his life, in silence, but it was a silence that cov- 
ered quivering torment. To have lost everything 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 367 

— to have impoverished his family and his friends 
—this was bitter, but it was nothing to the bitter- 
ness of the treachery that had smirched his good 
name, and the sting of scandal that accused him 
of wilfully luring people to ruin. One transaction 
especially weighed upon him. Only two days be- 
fore the failure Ward, by a skilful deceit, had 
prevailed upon him to borrow $150,000 of Mr. 
William K. Vanderbilt. He thought he had repaid 
it next morning by a check on the Marine Bank, 
but it now appeared that the check was worthless. 
The loan had been made to him personally as a 
favor, and he felt it to be a debt of honor. He at 
once turned over to Mr. Vanderbilt all that he 
owned of value, even to the swords that had been 
presented to him during the war, and the carvings 
and caskets and precious things given him by 
kings and emperors during his trip around the 
world. Mr. Vanderbilt tried to prevent this 
sacrifice, but the General and Mrs. Grant insisted 
that the debt be paid at once in full. 

li it had not been for the generosity of two 
men, one of whom Grant had never seen, they 
might literally have wanted money to buy bread. 
Four days after the failure a Mr. Charles Wood, of 
Lansingburg, New York, wrote to Grant, offer- 
ing to lend him $1000 without interest, and in- 
closing his check for $500, "on account," as he 



o 



68 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 



expressed it, "of my share for services ending 
April, 1865," and about the same time Senor 
Romero, the Mexican minister at Washington, a 
friend of many years' standing, came to him per- 
sonally and almost forced upon him a similar 
loan. Upon these the family lived until Mrs. 
Grant could sell a house that she owned in Wash- 
ington, which furnished the family with money 
for their daily needs, and enabled them to repay 
Romero's generous loan. 

It has been thought humiliating that with all 
the men Grant helped to place and fortune, the 
two most ready to aid him were a total stranger 
and a man of alien race. Yet it was not unnat- 
ural. His instinct was like that of the animal that 
carries its hurt into the deepest shade to suffer 
alone, and it was easier for a warm-hearted im- 
pulsive stranger to write and offer him a slight 
equivalent "for services ending April, 1865," 
than for people who knew the reticent old General 
to break through his reserve and approach him in 
his misfortune. As for Romero, he was a warm 
friend and a gallant gentleman, and it is pleasant 
to think that Mexico, the wonderland of Grant's 
youth, and the land to which his thoughts turned 
as a means of uniting the South and the North 
after the war, should have been so ready to ex^ 
tend a helping hand. 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 369 

Ward and Fish were brought to trial. The 
president of the Marine Rank tried to pose as a 
victim, and published letters which distinctly con- 
nected General Grant with the business methods 
employed by the dishonest partners. This was the 
heaviest blow of all. 'T have made it the rule of 
my life to trust a man long after other people 
gave him up," he said in bitterness, "but I don't 
see how T can ever trust any human being again." 
The letters were undoubtedly signed by Grant. 
They had been cunningly worded for their pur- 
pose, and slipped among other papers brought for 
him to sign in a moment of haste. He was guilty 
of over-confidence in his business partners, and of 
putting his name to papers he had not read, but 
free from all knowledge of their villainy. 

Fish was sentenced to seven years' imprison- 
ment, Ward to ten years'. Grant, their victim, 
died a year later, his end undoubtedly hastened by 
their crimes. It is an inexpressibly sad tale. And 
yet, that last year of his life is a year that we 
would not willingly lose from the history of his 
career, for in it he rose to heroism unapproached 
by even the best of his battle days. He was Grant 
the unconquered to the end. 

A fall on the icy pavement had made him a 
cripple in the winter of 1883. In IMay, 1884, when 
the trouble came, he was still unable to move 



370 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

about without crutches. The shock of discovery 
did not at first appear to affect his health, but the 
frame that had responded so splendidly to his will 
on the battle-field, resisting cold and hunger and 
fatigue as though not bound by ordinary mortal 
laws, was sapped of its vitality. Little by little it 
became evident to those about him that he was 
not only an old man but a sick one. He had borne 
a stirring part in the affairs of the world, and 
now all that seemed left of life for him was the 
pity of some men, the slander of others, and the 
sinking into an obscure old age. He was a man 
of deep though inarticulate emotions, and his 
mind preyed upon his strength. He looked, as 
one near him expressed it, "like a man gazing into 
his open grave." Yet when that same friend 
ventured to exhort him to cheerfulness, he an- 
swered sharply that he was "not going to commit 
suicide." 

Then a way was opened to him, and brooding 
gave way to action. Before the failure of Grant 
and Ward the publishers of a famous magazine 
had asked him to write an article for them about 
the battle of Shiloh, and he refused. After his 
fortune was swept away the offer was repeated, 
for two articles instead of one, and he found to 
his delight that the work not only distracted his 
mind and gave him pleasure, but provided a 




GKNKKAL OKAN T Al Ml. .\K(;ki;( 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 373 

means by which he could earn the money his 
family so sorely needed. Out of the first-fruits 
of his |x^n he paid his del)t to J\lr. Wood. 

When it became known that he was willing to 
write about his past experiences it seemed that 
half the publishers in the country came to him 
with oiTers, and he began to realize that he had it 
in his power to provide not only for the present, 
but for the f utu're of his family. 

He set to work upon his Memoirs, for he felt 
there was no time to be lost. A strange and pain- 
ful alTection of the throat had come upon him, 
with symptoms that made the doctors look grave. 
Then the dreadful word "cancer" began to be 
whispered, first as a suspicion, later as a certainty 
— and it was clear that he was indeed looking into 
his open grave. But he was a soldier. No Grant 
had ever been afraid to die, he told his son ; and 
quietly, resolutely, just as he had fought his bat- 
tles, he set to work to hold his grim enemy at bay 
until he had done what he could for the family he 
must leave behind. Five or six hours a day he 
worked upon his book. When the pain increased 
and the languor became so great that he could not 
hold the pen, still he worked, dictating in a voice 
sunk to a whisper. It was the bravest, most 
courageous, most loyal fight that ever great 
commander waged. 



374 THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

He was handling a new weapon, and facing a 
new foe, and the certain outcome of the struggle 
was death, but he told his story as he had lived his 
life, simply, quietly, without protestation or fear. 
He did not think that he had the pen of a ready 
writer, and he made no pretense to style, yet the 
clearness that marked his orders on the field of 
battle, and the tale he had to tell gave this work 
of his dying hand a distinction that makes it one 
of the notable books of his generation. 

When it was learned that he was desperately 
ill a great wave of sympathy went out to him. All 
the enmities of his political life and all the slurs 
and veiled accusations of the last miserable 
months were lost in the memory of what he had 
done for his country, and in admiration of the un- 
flinching way in which he was meeting his last 
foe. And the sick man, sensitive to the currents 
of public opinion, for all his apparent indifference, 
knew, and was comforted. Congress passed a bill 
restoring him to his rank in the army. It was 
signed on the 4th of March, 1885. It came not a 
day too soon. When he was told. Grant neither 
smiled nor spoke. He seemed past the point of 
caring, but afterward his mind dwelt on it, and 
it was seen how much he valued this tribute of his 
country's love. 

A fortnight after that the lawyers came into his 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 375 

room. They needed his testimony a^ain in the 
trial of Fish, the president of the Marine liink, 
and thoit2;-h speaking- was almost impossihlc, he 
summoned all his strength and gave it clearly, 
fully, the accusation of a dying man, that carried 
conviction in every syllahle. The ordeal was quickly 
over, but it left him exhausted, and soon word 
was flashed over the wires of the country that his 
life was a question of days or even hours. The 
street about his house filled with people, silent like 
the crowds in the Orient that had watched him 
pass by, but sorrowful, as only his countrymen 
could be. On the night of March 31st the family 
and doctors feared the final hour had come, but 
after that there was a great and marked change 
for the better. It was as though his unfinished 
work had drawn him from the very brink of the 
grave. "I want to live and finish my book," were 
the words he breathed as soon as speech returned. 
His gain was marvelous and rapid. Two days 
after he was thought to be dying he walked to the 
window and looked out on the people gathered 
below, and on Easter Sunday he sent them a mes- 
sage: "I am very much touched— and grateful— 
for the sympathy and interest manifested in me by 
my friends — and by — those who have not hitherto 
been regarded as friends." His improvement 
could be seen almost from day to day. He even 



2,7^ THE BOYS' LIFE OF 

went out driving once more, tottering to his car- 
riage and back again with feeble though deter- 
mined steps. Physically he was the shadow of his 
former self. His will alone remained— his will, 
and a great gentleness for his family and the 
people who did what they could to make his agony 
easier. It was an agony. Although he seemed so 
much better the disease was eating its way relent- 
lessly on. He had come back from the grave to 
finish his task, but he knew that the time was 
short. He worked whenever strength was given 
him, dictating to a stenographer until his voice 
failed him, then seizing the pen and forcing his 
weary hand to write what he could no longer say. 

He grew weaker as the spring advanced, and 
his work was more fitful. There were days when 
he could only sit and wait for strength to go on. It 
was a long and terrible struggle, and the people 
who watched him marveled at his courage and 
unvarying fortitude. He triumphed. The book 
was finished. His mighty will prevailed, and 
forced Death to stand aside until his work was 
done. After that there was no more striving. 

On the i6th of June they took him to Mt. Mc- 
Gregor near Saratoga, that he might enjoy the 
country freshness and the grass and trees that he 
had longed to see during the winter. His eyes 
dwelt upon West Point as the train passed by, and 



ULYSSES S. GRANT 377 

he turned to his wife with a wistful smile, but he 
could no longer speak. He lingered for several 
weeks at Mt. IMcGregor, surrounded by his family 
for whom he had made the supreme effort ; his 
wife who had been to him all that a wife could be ; 
the children that he had loved with a deep if silent 
tenderness; and the three grandchildren whose 
prattle had broken in upon his labors, and now 
lightened the weary hours of his waiting. Outside 
the grounds throngs of people passed slowly by. 
He did not mind. He knew that they were drawn 
by sympathy. "I should like," he wrote, "to talk 
with them if I could." When they bowed he re- 
turned their salutations. Sometimes friends cafne 
to sit with him. One was Romero. Another, al- 
most the last, was his classmate Simon Buckner, 
who had been kind to him in New York long years 
ago, and whose kindness Grant had repaid at 
Donelson. "I wanted you to know," he said as he 
sat beside his friend, "that many Confederate offi- 
cers sympathize with you in your sickness and 
trouble." Words like these were very sweet in 
Grant's dying ears. 

On the 22d of July he took to his bed. On the 
23d, a morning of beautiful summer sunshine, at 
a few minutes past eight o'clock, he breathed his 
last. His martyrdom was ended ; the continuing 
glory of his fame was just begun. 



378 ULYSSES S. GRANT 

"In my case I have not found that republics are 
ungrateful, nor are the people," he had written 
with feeble pencil but steadfast faith to Mr. Wood 
two weeks before the end. This was the answer 
brought by clear-sighted Death to his perturbed 
human cry of a year before — "I don't see how I 
can ever trust any human being again !" 

He had given up everything to pay his debts. 
Of all his trophies there was not even a sword left 
to lay upon his coffin. He was right. The Repub- 
lic was not ungrateful. The pageant of his burial 
was all that his rank and services and the respect 
of a sorrowing country could make it. But the 
real tribute lay not in funeral dirges or minute 
guns, or the slow-moving military pomp for which 
the man lying dead had cared so little. It lay in 
the bond that united the silent column of mourn- 
ers that followed him to his last resting-place — 
Philip Sheridan and Simon Buckner, Wm. T. 
Sherman and Joseph Johnston — the men who had 
fought with him and those who had fought 
against him, moving together toward a goal over 
which was inscribed the great and passionate 
desire of his warrior life : "Let us have Peace." 






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